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AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


B IRovel 


BY 

EVA WILDER McGLASSON 



AUTHOR OF 


“DIANA’S livery” 


ETC. 





ILLUSTRATED 

BY FRANK V. DU MOND 


NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
1892 




Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers. 


All rishts reserved. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE WINDOW FRAMED. A MAN’s FACE 
— THE FACE OF OLD BOB VALLEY” . Frontispiece 
A MAN SITTING BY THE GRATE FIRE 


GAVE HER AN ANXIOUS LITTLE LOOK” 

‘ OH, THAT ?’ SMILED BYLANDS. ‘ THAT 

Faces 

page 

2 

IS ROSETTA valley’” 

DELK STRAIGHTENED HIMSELF, LOOK- 

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ING pale” 

ROSETTA STARTED, LIFTING HERSELF 


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ON HER ELBOW ” 

SHE WAS SINGING, INDEED, BUT SHE DID 

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NOT KNOW HOW OR WHY ” . . . . 

SYLVIA HAD TOUCHED HIS ARM, HER 

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LITTLE SOFT LAUGH WAS IN HIS EARS ” 

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AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


I 

That it was a sort of mockery Sylvia knew 
very well. There were tears in her eyes, and as 
she saw that she was getting a blurred view of 
outer things she gave a disgusted little laugh. 

As usual, I am playing with the puppets 
she thought. “ I have got myself to a weeping 
pitch because it seems as if tears ought naturally 
to accompany one’s last look at the familiar.” 

It was painfully familiar; there could be no 
doubt of that. For ten years Sylvia had seen it 
all, to the uttermost verge of surfeit ; but it ap- 
peared now as if there was a chance that when 
she had left the well-ordered brick houses far be- 
hind, she might be haunted with an inability to re- 
call their exact look. She might forget whether 
the yellow blinds were in the next house or the 
house opposite, and the fat green tassels on the 
parsonage curtains might wholly elude her. 

Sylvia felt that she wanted a sure background — 


I 


2 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


cold, monotonous, rigid — upon which, as upon a 
primed canvas, the new wild life to which she 
was going should show itself in vivid outlines. 
To this end she set the grassy curbs in her mind 
along with the strait gravel-paths and patches of 
garden. A loose brick in a chimney hard by 
looked pinker than the rest, its crumbling shape 
softly rounded. Sylvia put this in the woof of re- 
membrance as a sort of lock-stitch which should 
hold the other threads fast. 

She could catch a glimpse of the academy 
grounds — their trees sketched in sharply with the 
black pencil of March, the massive buildings 
nicking the white sky with rows of little chimneys. 

A thin cloud overhead parted, writhing with 
an effect of sentient pain. It seemed to embody 
Sylvia’s feelings, which had already defined them- 
selves to her as uncomfortable only because they 
were not making her suffer enough. 

As she let the brown reps curtains fall together, 
a man sitting by the grate fire gave her an anxious 
little look. 

“Well,” he said — “well, Sylvia? going pretty 
middling hard, is it? Giving up an old home, 
noAv — I tell you it’s — it’s rough.” 

His long legs, clothed in countrified broadcloth 
trousers, were finished off with wide, polished 
shoes, which curled up at the toes as in bitter 
resignation to their wasted capacity. His eye- 


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AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


3 


lids, triangular in shape, hitching up at the inner 
corners, gave him a peculiarly shrewd look as he 
regarded his niece over hands set palm to palm, 
his middle-aged face tufted with a hollow beard, 
chinchilla in hue. 

This expression, modified with alarm, took an 
easier mould as he saw that Sylvia, whatever her 
feelings might be, was not openly weeping. He 
had been preparing himself all day for tears, and 
it had seemed to him that the precise moment of 
overflow would be when the wagon came for the 
trunks. As they carried her boxes through the 
hall she would be reminded of that other burden 
which, a month or so before, had been borne 
over the boarding-house threshold, mocking the 
sunshine with its glitter of silver-plate. He him- 
self remembered the long black shape and square 
coffin handles with a sense of shuddering. 

“ No,” said Sylvia, coming closer to the fire, 
“ it isn’t very hard to give it up. I was trying to 
make it hard, but I didn’t succeed very well.” 
To Captain Bylands’s surprise she gave a small 
sound of laughter, and then her brows knitted. 
“ I don’t like myself for being glad that I shall 
probably never see this place again,” she said, 
suddenly. “ My old home ! I must be very 
slight of character. I have always this same 
sense of something thin and insufficient in my 
make-up. When people dislike or like me I 


4 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


think, ‘ Oh, you wouldn’t do either if you knew 
on how frail a base your sentiments rest !’ ” A 
shade of bewilderment crept into her voice. 
“ Do you know,” she put in rather sharply, “ I 
believe — I had almost forgotten that — that my 
father is out there in the graveyard ?” 

The captain’s foot took a judicial poise. 

“ Look here, Sylvia,” he insisted, “ you’re too 
honest with yourself. I d’know as we’ve got any 
reason for being sorry your paw’s gone. He 
never seemed to git much out of life, Jim, never. 
I reckon he’s just as well off. He always got 
everything he wanted, but as soon as he got it he 
didn’t want it ! This earth’s a poor place for 
finicky folks. They’re better off” — the cap- 
tain’s voice indicated no consciousness of irony 
— “ in heaven.” 

Sylvia leaned against the mantel, her meagre 
little chin in her hand, her yellowish eyes wan- 
dering over the serene face of the gilt clock. 

“He never seemed happy,” she said. “I 
don’t believe he cared very much even for me. 
I never felt any sense of relationship with him ; 
not so much as towards some of the other teach- 
ers at the academy. I knew I had to learn the 
lesson in literature because he taught it — that 
was all. After I graduated, two years ago, he 
let me do as I pleased.” She smiled. “Per- 
haps he realized how abominably safe it is to 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


5 


give a girl unlimited liberty in a town like this.” 
Her eyes narrowed. “ Uncle, I have hated it — 
this passive, objectless life ! I can’t describe it. 
No one could unless he sketched with the pen 
of oblivion on nothingness. Tea-parties, Chau- 
tauqua circles, an occasional lecture or musical 
quartet — these are the waves in our social pool. 
Of course, the water being so placid, there are 
never any wrecks. The little boats have only 
an effect of motion ; the sailors wear blue ribbons 
in their hats ; the waves are only painted waves. 
It’s safe travel — but you never seem to get any- 
where.” 

The captain stirred uneasily. 

“Unly thing is,” he began, “that being used 
to all this soft fodder, you may find Kentucky 
pretty middling rough.” 

“ I’m sick of smoothness.” 

The captain’s face assumed a gratified air. 

“ Well, we got the husks on at Chamouni,” he 
answered her, cheerfully. “ Our hearts are all 
right, though. We stick by our friends. Tell 
you ! thar was a man from our town went over 
to Clingsville last fall and got to filling up and 
junketing round — no harm in him if they let him 
alone, but some fellers got to projecting with him, 
and he shot two or three of ’em in their tracks. 
Well, sirs, we hustled that feller away before the 
marshal ever got his spurs on; rushed him off 


6 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


to the hills,” added the captain, in an accent of 
triumph, “and they hevn’t got him yet! Fine 
feller Helman, but you don’t want to fool with 
a man that’s drinking.” 

“Well,” said Sylvia, a little slowly, as if this 
elucidation of the principles of friendship had 
confused her, “ at least I shall see the raw ma- 
terial of human nature, and find out what men 
are like before civilization has patted and squeezed 
them into false shape. Only” — she sat down be- 
side him, a questioning tremor at her lips — “ do 
you really want me ? Sha’n’t I disturb your old- 
bachelor life ?” 

“ Disturb !” cried the captain. “ Ever since 
Jim died I’ve just naturally ben carried away to 
think you’re going to belong to me. I’m your 
unly near kin, Sylvia. It’s a mighty lucky thing 
for me that your paw never accumulated no prop- 
erty. You’ll make up to me for all — ” He 
paused, adding briefly, “Jim hedn’t treated me 
square.” Sylvia stroked his hand. There was 
a strange little pregnant pause. 

^ “ I don’t remember my mother,” she said, very 
softly, as if she feared to strike pain on some old 
hurt in the captain’s heart ; “ but she must have 
been very sweet, since you and — he both cared 
for her.” 

“ She was a mighty good-looking woman,” said 
the captain, without emotion ; “ a fine figger, and 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


7 


a good entertainer; but I’m just as well off as if 
I’d got her. I came in an ace of it,” he added, 
with an air of impartial criticism. “ Hed her 
word — was on the home-stretch, my nose scent- 
ing the wire, when Jim came stepping home from 
college in Danville and headed me off. He was 
ten years younger than me. We didn’t ’pear to 
hev the same stock in us. Kind of funny we 
happened to be brothers ; though,” he cut in, pict- 
uresquely, “thar’s a heap of difference in tim- 
ber out of one tree. Some branches ’ll be stanch 
and some pithy. I was the butt log, heavy with 
being near the soil. He was a top twig, always 
sniffing at the sky, and a little light- weighted. 
Slick-tongued feller, Jim was, and women is such 
plumb fools — some of ’em,” interjected the cap- 
tain, with a timely recollection of his hearer — 
“that the best talker always gits ’em. They 
don’t know that the first lick real love gits in is 
across a man’s mouth.” He paused thoughtfully. 
“ I never heard the drum beat,” he added, in a 
moment. “Letty and Jim they run off and mar- 
ried, and Jim got a school up in Bourbon, and I 
never see them no more till Letty died and I 
went to the burying. You was running all 
around, Sylvia, cute as a witch. And I found 
out that Jim and her hedn’t struck it so very well, 
after all. They was like cypress- wood and ce- 
dar — just rotted each other out.’^ 


8 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


He seemed to consider the force of this illus- 
tration. Sylvia leaned against him. 

“ Am I like my mother ?” she asked. She was 
staring into the fire, absorbed in a study of this 
commonplace story which had meant fate to so 
many lives. She was thin and little, and her 
black gown made her face look whiter than usual. 
Over the arch of her nose the skin seemed too 
tight, and her lips, of a delicate freshness of color, 
were always apart. Towards the inner ends of 
her narrowly drawn eyebrows was a little dent 
which gave her eyes a curious look of simulation. 
She kept on stroking the captain’s big hand in 
an abstracted sort of fashion, her own fingers so 
slight, the suffusion of the palms and nails so 
pink, that streaks of airy color seemed to play 
about their movements, as if they were weaving 
the dawn. 

“Am I too near for kindly criticism?” she 
smiled, recalling herself. She got up and stood 
a little away, her dark head high, the hair falling 
loosely backward. 

An impression of stateliness crept through the 
captain’s perceptions, mingled with something 
like bewilderment that it should result from so 
meagre elements. 

“ Er — no,” he deliberated, “ you ain’t like 
Letty. She was mighty well-favored — ” 

“ Oh !” said Sylvia. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


9 


“ Not that you ain’t,” paltered her uncle, in a 
tone of urgent apology. “ When you git to climb- 
ing over the Casey County knobs, and are fleshed 
up and git some color in your cheeks — ” 

“ I’ll pass in a crowd,” added Sylvia, a gleam 
in her lashes. Then she looked towards the win- 
dows, listening. There was a rumbling outside. 
“ They have come for our things,” she said. 


II 

The tall knob south-west of Chamouni was 
fleeced in patches of snow, soft and light upon 
the rough slope, as if a flock of sheep had scram- 
bled down the hill-side, leaving scraps of wool 
behind them. A lower rise to the left was blocked 
out in dense shadows ; the sun being low, its last 
rays yellowed a clump of ice-sheathed trees on 
the summit to the likeness of some antique resin 
threaded with black moss. 

Against the dark piles mottled with sparse firs, 
the little houses of the hamlet slanted a huddle 
of steep roofs, the slight snow melting about the 
chimneys in dark ovals. The single street, start- 
ing out of the turnpike, shot with a sort of mild 
enthusiasm some hundred paces, fetching up very 
short at the freight-house, a low red building with 


lO 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


a store in one end, its high platform leading 
round to the post-office, which occupied a furtive 
nook in the rear. 

Hard by the store steps a saddle-horse, tied to 
a post which time had buffeted out of the per- 
pendicular, whinnied shrilly as he pranced in his 
fastening. Four black hogs, of an alert, un- 
swinish variety, nosed the goose tracked road 
about him. The train was momently looked for, 
a circumstance which accounted for the men and 
boys gathering on the sheltered side of the plat- 
form. It was a group apparently something larger 
than usual, for a girl coming out of the store 
stopped to look. 

“ Waitin’ on cap’n ?” she asked, flinging back 
her short brown hair, which seemed to have an 
electrical quality and stood out. She shivered in 
her short skirts, her spindling, big-jointed ankles 
close together. 

“ Oh, me ? I’m hangin’ round to see if cap’n’s 
niece ain’t about my size,” explained a lank young 
fellow with long narrow dimples in his cheeks. 
His arms were extended in two rigid half-circles, 
the red hands hanging. He laughed as he spoke. 
“ You better tell Mis’ Lichens to mosey round 
and git up somethin’ relishin’ for supper, Selesty. 
Cap’n’s niece lives in God’s kentry whar they 
eat light bread. She won’t take to fat meat and 
sody biscuits — too fine-haired !” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


II 


“ I ain’t no pack-mule fer carryin’ orders,” re- 
torted the girl, running down the steps. She 
pulled a shawl over her head and held the folds 
together with her teeth. 

“ Selesty don’t often speak up,” commented an 
elderly man sitting on a barrel, “but when she 
do she kin read yeh the law right down to the dot 
— hey. Hen ?” He pulled at a wiry beard as he 
spoke, as if he were jerking loose his ideas. His 
coat-collar, turning up about his ears, disclosed 
the unfaded outline of itself which it commonly 
hid. “ Kind-uh pity ’bout the passenger coach, 
ain’t it he pursued, easily leaving the subject 
of Selesty. 

“Wrecked agin ?” 

“Jumped a switch yestiddy mornin’ and got 
her side splintered. Thet coach beats anything 
goin’ ! — ben in thirteen wrecks in three months 
and jest ez hansome ez ever, ’cept thet so many 
folks gittin’ hurted inside hain’t done the furni- 
ture no good.” Henry Dye pondered. 

“Jake ’ll hev to fetch capn over in the engine, 
won’t he ?” 

“ Yea-uh. Onlest they want to ride in a box- 
cyar. Jake’s sick over the coach.” 

“ Well, the engine’s a mighty sight safer.” 

“ Cornin’ over Switchback nothin’s safe but a 
dead man,” protested the other. “ I mostly do 
all my prayin’ crossin’ them trusties. Prayin’ ’s 


12 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


a mighty comfortin’ thing when you’re slidin’ 
down a mounting-side with a steam-engine ahead 
of yeh.” 

The younger man offered no views on this 
pious reflection, but knocked his knees together, 
his red-lashed eyes set on the toll-gate pole of 
Winklers, a small hamlet beyond Knob Lick. 

Years before, when talk first rose of running a 
ten -mile railway from Clingsville, on the South- 
ern, to some point of the timber-land westward, 
Winklers had great hopes of being the terminus. 
The railway men looked upon it with favor, but 
asked the hamlet to aid in building a bridge 
across Green River, a levy which Winklers, secure 
in its reckoning, refused. The corporation arbi- 
trated its cause with a spice of malice ; but the 
little town, believing itself, according to the words 
of its leading burgher, to have “ the bulge” on the 
magnates, was not to be moved with airy threats. 
Whereupon the capitalists, represented by a gen- 
tleman who had made his money in pork, and 
had perhaps caught some of the mental traits of 
the stuff he dealt in, declared their design of 
leaving Winklers out. They would fix their own 
terminus, and build a town to suit themselves. 

A farmer of the name of Wimply was surprised 
one morning, as he sat in his cabin door, to re- 
ceive an offer of four dollars an acre for his 
“survey,” a lot of hilly land across the creek 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


13 


from Winklers. Wimply, having no mind to co- 
quet it with fortune, closed with this offer on the 
instant. A little hollow in the bend of the knob 
was chosen for the new town, and, as it were, over- 
night the sound of building rose. The railway 
grew fast, threading virgin forest, and zigzagging 
one steep hill -side in a perilous descent called 
Switchback. 

At Chamouni, named from its hills by the 
pork-dealer, who had a lively fancy, lumber in- 
terests took hold. A hogshead factory went up, 
shingle-mills and stave-yards and the offices of 
outlying saw-mills spread on the banks of the 
branch. Little sheds of houses sprung up among 
the lumber piles, and on the principal street, un- 
paved and curbless, a livery-stable and two stores 
faced down the freight-house. 

The most important building in town was un- 
doubtedly the hotel, kept by the Widow Lichens. 
It withdrew reservedly from the business quar- 
ter of the town, a lean brown house, gashed about 
with two rows of red - curtained windows. In 
front a railless porch gave on a stretch of com- 
mon. In the corner grew a half dead fir, its 
rusty foliage disposed in flat planes about the 
thin gray trunk, like scraps of singed paper 
strung on an upright letter-file. Across the road 
were meadows stretching off to a purple sky- 
line. It was not a cheerful view, and Henry Dye 


14 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


recalled himself from a viewless regard of it with 
a distinct animation. 

“Ain’t that No. 7 a-blowin’ fer Switchback?” 
he asked. “ Listen, once ! Hunh-hunh ! Reck- 
on the trusties is pretty safe to-day — froze solid.” 
He followed the others around the corner of 
the store, through the window of which a group 
of men could be seen in speech, their feet on the 
stove. 

The narrow railway drove eastward in a groove 
between low hills, its track spangling the dis- 
tance in a shining star. There was a long blast 
of steam as the engine dashed in sight, a little 
spitting black shape, dragging a single brown 
freight -car. The face of Captain Bylands ap- 
peared in the narrow window of the engine, 
smiling a greeting. 

“ Howdy all ?” he cried. There was an eager 
rush for his baggage. 

“Yer, now, cap’n ! give me all thet thar plun- 
der. I’ll be fightin’-mad ef I don’t git to tote 
some o’ your stuff.” 

The captain was helping Sylvia off the high, 
slippery seat. 

“ Here we are !” he said. “ This is Chamouni, 
Sylvia — big jump, wasn’t it ?” 

The men stepped back to give her room to 
alight. Sylvia’s face was trembling a little. She 
looked at the staring throng, the mean houses, 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


15 


the bald hills, the lumber -piles. The yellow in 
the west was fading. Night was spreading over 
the sky like plates of iron which pressed the 
liquid sunset into an oozing thread. A lighted 
lamp, hanging in the Lichens House door, seemed 
to catch and hold a single drop of this melting 
amber. 

“ My niece,” announced the captain, in a high 
tone. “ These here are friends of mine, Sylvia.” 
But though they had been thus favorably com- 
mended to Sylvia’s notice, the men hung back a 
little, vaguely struck with some sense of differ- 
ence in the small figure before them. A desire 
to be cordial expressed itself in shambling feet 
and unpocketed fists and uncertain smiles. 

Sylvia’s hands were wrapped in an end of her 
long travelling cloak. Her chin lifted sharply 
from the high collar and her eyes looked small. 
This was it, then ? This w'as the new life, the land 
of which the stones were iron, the hills strength. 
These were the men, full of untrammelled vigor, 
who were to pour vitality into her empty concep- 
tions of humanity — men mighty as the men which 
were of old, before mortal blood ran thin and 
slow. For the briefest instant, as she faced the 
shrinking huddle of jean-clad forms, she thought 
how unlike her previsions of it the real place was. 

She had been glad to think Chamouni would 
be rude and simple, but there had been some- 


l6 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

thing Homeric in her ideas of these Kentucky 
wildernesses in which she was to pitch her tents. 
She had fancied that in them life would manifest 
itself with a sort of Old Testament breadth and 
meaning. If certain of the laxities of patriarchal 
days prevailed, they would only prove the pres- 
ence of great primitive impulses, as pardonable 
as the knots in an oak — mere freaks of quick sap. 

Glancing around, Sylvia had a spasm of the sort 
of amusement which sticks hard in the throat. 
And then she seemed to try a little for compos- 
ure, and a faint color dashed her cheeks, the 
flesh of which was like silk and sagged softly in- 
ward. In a moment she had stepped forward, her 
hand out, her lips touched with a cordial smile. 

“ I am glad to know you,” she said, quietly. 
“ I hope you will all like me.” 


Ill 

The Lichens House had been put up by the 
land company for a hotel, and while the town 
was booming it had served this end. But the 
timber was thinning out now, and many of the 
saw-mills had moved farther on, and men still in- 
terested in business at Chamouni had for several 
years been holding out in the continually renewed 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


17 


hope that the railway would be extended into 
unbroken tracts of forest. Despite the facile 
promises of the corporation, and the occasional 
appearance of an important young man with a 
kit of surveying instruments, Chamouni had for 
some time been taking on an air of creeds out- 
worn. It seemed destined to fall into the condi- 
tion of a number of little places along the railway, 
which had once been villages, but which at pres- 
ent, as Sylvia remembered seeing them from the 
engine window, were only scant groups of huts in 
the neighborhood of a gaping building without 
walls, the remains of a mill from which the ma- 
chinery had been moved. 

In this day of decline the Lichens House had 
no transient guests except an occasional drum- 
mer, who never stayed longer than overnight. 
Captain Bylands fell into the class defined by 
Mrs. Lichens as “reg’lers.” Young Henry Dye, 
clerk in one of the stores, was also one of these. 

The house was accessible in front by means of 
a hungry- looking brown door with a dark sug- 
gestion of unwashed humanity about the knob, 
and leading directly into a room known as the 
office. This office was not at first sight calculated 
to invite the casual eye with intimations of good 
cheer. Sylvia’s first impression of it combined 
ideas of dinginess and blankness. 

Its plaster walls were decorated about with a 


2 


1 8 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

desultory dado of match scratches, resembling a 
fringy design of river-reeds done in burnt sienna. 
There was nothing else in way of mural furnish- 
ings, except an obsolete calendar, and a little 
cracked mirror supported by a red tin box, in 
which was a black comb with vaguely defined 
teeth. A roller-towel flanked these arrangements 
for the toilet, and under the curtainless south 
window, on a long bench, were two basins, a bar 
of sanguinary looking castile-soap, and a water- 
bucket with green hoops, its staves painted yellow 
and brown in a sort of brindle effect like the 
pelt of a tortoise-shell cat. 

“ Hev a cheer,” said Mrs. Lichens, rushing hos- 
pitably forward to greet the captain and his 
charge. “ I hevn’t got nothin’ like I’d like to 
hev it — God help me ! — the land company won’t 
keep the place up, and pore widder I be ! — I can’t 
unly do so much. Ef ’twasn’t for prayer I’d be 
like them thet hopes without sorrer.” She pushed 
a chair towards the stove which sat askew in a 
corner, its pipe running bias to reach the chimney 
without any waste of time or unnecessary expen- 
diture of elbows. It was a vase -shaped affair, 
scaled with rust, its little door furnished with a 
rotatory apparatus for draught, which, being open, 
disclosed three wedges of firelight. Beside it 
were two soap-boxes, one filled with coal, the 
other with sawdust. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


19 


Sylvia looked around at the splint chairs and 
bare floor. She wondered apathetically as to the 
uses of a certain black-framed pile set the length 
of the room— a structure which she learned had 
been a bar in local-optionless days, before Cha- 
mouni set up private demijohns or got drunk on 
professional advice. 

“ Everything they could do to take the bread 
out’n my mouth,” said Mrs. Lichens, “they went 
to work and done. They shet the bar on me 
and lef’ me with nothin’ but the grace of God.” 
She had a way of sighing so pervasively that her 
comfortable shape shook like protoplasm. An 
expression of pious resignation sat with peculiar 
incongruity on her face, which was like a shining 
red apple, the wide mouth resembling a big bite 
in the white pulp. Her expansive skirts were 
always excitedly fluttering, and her small sleek 
head surmounted this bodily amplitude like the 
steel peg of a top. 

Captain Bylands was still carrying a valise, and 
Sylvia’s travelling-rug trailed over his arm. 

“ I reckon Sylvia ’d like to rest before supper,” 
he said. “ Mis’ Lichens, you better show her what- 
ever room — going to give her No. 6 ?” He stayed 
Sylvia as she turned to follow Mrs. Lichens. “ Six 
is the best in the house,” he said, doubtfully, 
“ but it ain’t what you ben used to. I want to say 
this, Sylvia: what it ain’t got it can hev.” 


20 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Sylvia glanced back at him with that little 
tremulous smile which the captain had already 
come to recognize as a sign of sadness. When 
his niece was in a tranquil temper her expression 
was almost serious. That half-tearful sweetness 
of aspect the captain distrusted. He could hear 
the two women’s voices above on the landing, 
Sylvia’s tones drowned in the sighs and protesta- 
tions of Mrs. Lichens 

“ Better let me bring you up a cup o’ coffee 
b’iled right strong. Or, I’ll tell you” — her accents 
grew confidential, “ a mouthful o’ toddy ’ll do you 
more good than anything goin’. I got some firs’ 
trate.” 

“ No,” said Sylvia. “ I shall be all right when 
I have rested. I don’t believe I like toddy.” 

“ Some don’t,” admitted the landlady. “ Me, 
now — I can’t go the smell of it— churns me right 
sick. But I hev to keep it nigh me, ready mixed, 
in case some of the reg’lers was to be took sud- 
dint like the twinklin’ of a eye.” 

Upon this remark, at which the captain smiled 
cynically, the door closed, and he heard Mrs. 
Lichens rushing down-stairs. 

“ Poor little soul !” he thought, taking from a 
wallet a few threads of fine-cut and rolling them 
abstractedly together. “ She’ll be as still-mouthed 
as a rabbit if things don’t suit her ! This world’s 
a sorry place for folks that won’t holler when 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


21 


they’re hit.” He cast the brown wad into his 
cheek and kicked the stove door open. The 
glow cast up his tanned face in a weird combina- 
tion of russet and vermilion ! “ She ain’t one 

mite like Letty,” he pondered. “ How soft-spoken 
she was to them fellers at the station ! I mis- 
doubt if I’ll be able to keep her long. Some 
young sprig ’ll come stepping up, and I won’t be 
in it at all. I’ll feel like filling him with lead, 
but then I won’t be able to blame him none — 
confound his picture !” And then he heartened 
himself with the reflection that this indignation 
was untimely, and that Sylvia’s marriage need 
not be immediately anticipated, since there were 
no men about at whom she would “ shake a 
stick.” 

“I’m kind of satisfied that he ain’t in the mar- 
ket,” debated the captain, thinking of a certain 
young fellow who rose before him in a vivid in- 
solence of handsomeness. 

Sylvia’s own sentiments were of an order too 
spiritless for tears. She got up the next morn- 
ing with the sudden start which defines a pro- 
longed resolution not to get up at all. A cold 
dreariness pervaded the room, falling without en- 
couragement on the red and yellow stripes of the 
hemp carpet, and pricking the cracked window- 
shade with little wan stars. It was not raining out- 
side the mournful panes, the day seeming rather 


22 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


to be in that sullen stolidity of humor which con- 
veys merely a fixed intention of gloom. A dog 
in the hall was whining, and a man’s voice ut- 
tered a gruff expostulation. 

“ Quit yer yelpin’ befo’ I boot yeh plumb down 
the steers, you yeller-fice cur, you !” The window 
of the next room banged down, and some one in 
squeaking shoes tramped past Sylvia’s door. The 
whole of it— the barren newness, the harsh, un- 
wonted noise, the lack of interest, the hopeless 
lethargy of soul — this was life, and she must touch 
the heavy wheel and set the dull mechanism to 
moving. 

“You’ll find it kind of lonesome till you get 
acquainted,” the captain said across the break- 
fast-table. 

Sylvia opened a biscuit, wondering at the pun- 
gency of the smell. The table was long, and its 
cloths, despite their pronounced folds, had always 
a peculiar crinkled texture as if they were never 
ironed. Their stiffness was characteristic also of 
the red napkins stuck about in the heavy goblets, 
the fringe rigid with starch Everything had an 
air of uncompromising durability. The lion and 
unicorn, rampant on the upturned plates, looked 
uncommonly belligerent All the crockery was 
thick. Glass hats of toothpicks sat imposingly 
among the pies and poached eggs. The catsup 
bottles alone won the eye with an air of careless 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


23 


unconcern. Their sides were bedraggled, and 
over their clogged necks their tin caps cocked 
with a rakish joviality. 

“ Right gay town, Chamouni,” put in Henry 
Dye, across his knife-blade. “ We hev lots of 
doin’s here — sociables, dances — the reg’lar thing,” 
he added, in a large way, assuming the social order- 
ing of Casey County to be that with which Miss 
Bylands, himself, and other folk of experience were 
most familiar. “ Always something on the boards. 
Thar was a man killed down on the pike yisterdy.” 

“ Oh !” cried Sylvia, “ who ?” 

“ Feller the name of Jackson.” 

“ And the murderer ?” 

“ Ma’am ?” 

“ The man who did the killing ?” 

“ Oh ! feller the name of Filkins. Done a 
good job layin’ out that Jackson. He’s been 
cavortin’ around fer a week, drinkin’ and sp’ilin’ 
for a scrap. He tackled Filkins, and Filkins 
pulled on him.” He poured his colfee carefully. 

“ Did he — escape ?” 

Henry Dye looked indignant. 

“ No, he never ! he ain’t got no call to tuck 
tail and run, Filkins hain’t. Jackson wasn’t no 
good.” He added, pleasan%, “ Everybody likes 
Filkins — heavy-set man — wears a beard. I’ll 
bring him around some evenin’. He likes to talk 
to the girls, Filkins does.” 


24 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Sylvia regarded him gravely, remarking the 
length of the dimples in his cheeks, and the mild 
greenness of his glance, which would have been 
blue but for its mixture with sandy lashes. His 
smooth hair was precisely the color of a fresh 
carrot. When he smiled his lips defined a di- 
amond shape. 

“ He will be hanged, won’t he ?” asked Sylvia. 

“ Oh, if the law goes to foolin’ with it I reckon 
he’ll take to the bush till it blows over! hunh, 
cap’n ?” The captain expressed his views of the 
matter. Then, in deference to Sylvia’s probable 
ideas, he pursued : 

“ I don’t know as it makes much real difference 
whether the lawful is the mighty or the mighty is 
the lawful. When you say might makes right I 
reckon you ain’t very fur from eternal justice. 
Providence has pretty fair judgment : in a knock- 
down fight it generally sides with the best hitter.” 
He got up to go. “ Well, be good to yourself, 
Sylvia. I’ve got to go down to the office and 
see how business is. Delk got away yesterday, 
didn’t he. Dye 

“ Who’s Delk ?” asked Sylvia. 

“ Fohty-second cousin of yours that’s in the 
lumber business with me,” said the captain. 
“ Now if you get lonesome you come down. I’ll 
send some of the girls to visit you. Rosetty 
Valley, now I You’ll like Rosetty — reg’lar beauty. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


25 


fine figger but — well, I don’t know as Rosetty’s 
much of an entertainer.” 

•“ Mighty sweet girl,” commented Henry Dye, 
drawing a stream of coffee by sheer force of suc- 
tion across the space between him and the table. 

“ Does she live here ?” 

“ Mile beyond Winklers. She ain’t home jest 
now. Visitin’ her kin over at — the county seat.” 


IV 

Whether or not the absent Rosetta Valley 
would have helped out with her lauded presence 
Sylvia’s first weeks of tenting in the wilderness, 
was a question which Sylvia herself settled nega- 
tively. She was carrying off her dissatisfaction 
with as good a face as she could summon, but 
Chamouni struck so rough upon her bruised con- 
ceptions of it that smiles came hard, and she had 
no wish to enlarge the group before which these 
factitious amiabilities must be kept up. 

The unalloyed humanities were by no means 
so interesting as she had figured them. So far 
as Chamouni expressed them, they seemed to en- 
gender a mild tolerance for morality, and a great 
capacity for getting drunk and shooting off rifles. 
Sylvia had expected a lack of social tyrannies. 


26 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


but she found them in full swing, except that here 
they operated to laxity rather than restraint. The 
bounds between public control and individual 
liberty were broad and simple. A man could do 
with safety pretty much as he pleased, unless his 
desires conflicted with those of some one else, 
in which case the effective logic of the trigger de- 
cided the argument in favor of the better marks- 
man. Guilt was a question of expedition. If the 
malefactor could get away before the hand of the 
law reached for him, his innocence was estab- 
lished. If he was caught his friends regretfully 
admitted a fear of his criminality. 

That this fashion of life offered immoderate 
chances of lofty experience, Sylvia began to 
doubt. It seemed to her that it was not life any 
more than existence had been life in her Ohio 
town. All that could be said of it was that it 
was less abstract. 

Sylvia had felt always that she was not really 
living, but that the dull round of village days was 
merely a sort of greenroom interval in which she 
waited for her cue to go on the actual stage. 
Meanwhile she practised her steps a little, and 
tried to be patient, expecting each day to ring up 
the heavy curtain for her. She could not adjust 
herself to a belief that her part in the human 
comedy was to be such a part as her friends ac- 
cepted gladly — a husband, home, children. She 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


27 


was willing to think that her lines might ulti- 
mately range through these established common- 
places ; but surely there would first be something 
a little more dramatic, something in way of a 
situation, some slight posturing before an appre- 
ciative audience, some adventuring with destiny, 
some toying with tremendous issues. 

The idea of Kentucky had held at least an in- 
timation of such possibility as lies in change. 
From her side outlook she had been glad to see 
the domestic scenes shifted for new flats rich with 
greenery and full of dark vistas, in which lovers 
or conspirators might with equal likelihood show 
themselves. 

She had been in Chamouni several weeks, and 
the vistas were still merely voids in which neither 
hero nor villain appeared. The hand of fact as 
yet refused to pat her plastic world of fancy into 
shape. Sylvia found nothing to do. She spent 
long hours at her window staring at the knobs, 
brown, hairy with empty trees, seeming to threaten 
the white sky like the clinched fists of wretches 
shaken in a monarch’s impassible face. Some- 
times a buzzard careened ominously round the 
distant summits in lowering circles, and at the 
sight Sylvia’s soul smelled the savor of death. 

When the sun went down, warming the deso- 
late uplands , when a cow-bell tinkled and the bark 
of a dog rose over the lowing of the long-horned 


28 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


cattle, at such times the mysterious melancholy of 
nightfall wrapped round her like a burial-cloth. 
It was scarcely better in the morning, for the 
freshness of the fields, the renewed vigor of the 
unworn earth, only sharpened her sense of the 
futility of the things about her. Her dreams 
were done. She was doomed to waste at noon- 
day. The rich wine of knowledge was never to 
invigorate her asking lips. She was to have only 
such part with life as beasts have without prayer 
— breath, food, sleep. 

Even when she let her ideals slip the leash, 
and tried to take Chamouni for what it was, she 
found herself still in an orbit in which everything 
set a mock on her traditions. The Hines girls 
were her last illusion. 

She had noticed from her window the little 
white house where they lived — two old maids with 
an air which Sylvia had determined as an air of 
proud poverty. It was a prim cottage with a 
flower-pit in the yard, hard by a slim, diffident, 
pink pump, the handle of which shrunk beside it 
as if deprecating notice. It reminded Sylvia of the 
Hines girls themselves. She saw them often in the 
yard hanging out their chaste wash, or wiping off 
a window-pane, their flat shapes unmodified by the 
artless lines of their print frocks. Their mild, plain 
faces had the look of a youth which is resigned 
to time, and everything about them suggested the 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


29 


unchangeable spinster of fiction, occupied in a 
covert survey of the neighborhood doings. 

“ I think I should like to know the Hines 
girls,” said Sylvia to Mrs. Lichens. The land- 
lady’s lips fell wide. 

“The— who ?” 

“ Those old maids in the white house on Knob 
Lick.” She wondered at the conflicting emo- 
tions in Mrs. Lichens’ face. 

“ Never pass their names,” said the landlady, 
in a hoarse whisper; “they’re mean !” 

Sylvia stared. 

“Triflin’, you know,” explained the other, with 
a glance of intelligence. 

“ Oh !” said Sylvia. 

“ I pray fer ’em,” said Mrs. Lichens, “ but 
speak to ’em even over the fence I do not.” 

Sylvia had a curious change of sentiment tow- 
ards the Hines girls. Their little black dog, 
which they could be heard calling every night, 
lost to Sylvia’s eye his look of virtuous watchful- 
ness. She distinguished in him a rollicking pert- 
ness as of a terrier used to carousings. Her 
fancy played darkly over his sleek shape, and he 
came to seem absolutely diabolic as he leaped 
from the kitchen door of mornings. She never 
quite succeeded, however, in tracing the sem- 
blance of Phryne and Lais in the bony contours 
and honest, hard-working faces of his mistresses. 


30 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


They dazzled her moral sense by the way in 
which their obliquity escaped conventional color. 
She was all afield if these women, living with their 
little dog, wearing heelless gaiters, and killing a 
chicken for Sundays like proper folk, were gayly 
treading the primrose path. 

Sometimes to please the captain she went 
down the street to his office, a one-roomed hem- 
lock structure two doors beyond the small drug- 
shop. It had two very high desks and a fat 
stove, which, from its bent legs, seemed always 
doing a courtesy to visitors. Round the wall 
were narrow benches, nicked with the knives of 
the ox-drivers who commonly occupied them 
while waiting to have their loads of logs inspect- 
ed. Sylvia had chanced in the office one morn- 
ing in time to catch some strongly simple lan- 
guage from the teamsters, who, as they caught 
the captain’s scowl, held up rather blankly. Af- 
terwards the captain had explained to Sylvia 
that their oaths were a natural and inevitable 
corollary of their business, and that she had bet- 
ter, thereafter, come to visit him later in the day, 
when the teamsters were disposed of. 

“ For it’s no use to speak to ’em,” he admitted. 
“ I never see an ox-driver that didn’t cuss, and I 
never expect to. Looks like human nature can’t 
stand dealing with plumb fools, nohow.” 

One evening in March, having been in the 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


31 


house all day, Sylvia thought of going to write a 
letter at one of the high desks. She had been 
so long mewed in her close room that as she 
stood on the porch, drawing on her gloves, the 
outer world seemed to grasp her as with a great 
cool hand, and the feeling which stirred through 
her veins was a complete influx of vitality. A 
blear light empurpled the hills, and the gray sky 
was slashed in windy chrome. Far up the road 
the wagon-ruts pierced the distance with an ar- 
rowy gleam. A spotted cow was tramping by, 
the sharp breeze lifting thistle-balls of white fur 
along its spine. As Sylvia stepped on the elastic 
ground, a pig lying by the porch opened and shut 
one eye apprehensive of her approach, its bare 
tail singularly like the loop of a hemp rope run- 
ning down its back. 

She passed by the store, nodding with a smile 
at the group about the door ; men with lean 
necks and wide hats and clothes which seemed 
to partake of the color of the soil. The hills 
ahead disclosed a heartening hint of green, little 
dashes of white here and there against them, like 
chalk-strokes on the dark background, indicating 
the site of a house with a smoking chimney. 

The captain was poking the fire. He hailed 
his niece with a shout of welcome. He kept the 
oflice too warm for occupancy, and Sylvia ex- 
claimed at the heat as she threw off her cloak. 


32 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“Well, I hate half-way doings,'’ said the cap- 
tain. “ Give me straight goods and full measure 
every time.” 

“ Good or bad ?” laughed Sylvia, climbing on 
one of the tall stools. 

“ Well, yes,” her uncle decided. “ If a man 
sets up for a sinner I like to see him go ahead 
without crawfishing. Half-way wickedness is the 
meanest kind.” 

“ Most of us have a little conscience, even in 
our misdeeds,” protested Sylvia, trying a pen. 
The captain observed that she had got to writ- 
ing, and he refrained from a further statement of 
his views. He glanced from the stove, now 
translucent with heat, to Sylvia’s bent head and 
moving hand. The view from the window mo- 
mentarily occupied him. He gave a near-sighted 
squint at a man approaching in the road. The 
door opened, and Sylvia heard him say, “ Hello !” 
There was a noise of entrance. 

“ Didn’t look for you till next week,” went on 
the captain. “ How’s trade up the river ? You 
look thriving.” 

Sylvia turned round. The new-comer was a 
young man in a long, shaggy coat. He was 
glancing at her as he shook hands with the cap- 
tain, and in the dusk light she saw that his face 
had a swarthy richness of color, and that a slight 
thread of dark beard touched his lip. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


33 


“ My niece,” announced the captain, catching 
this interchange of looks. “ Sylvia, this is Delk 
Bylands. Heard me speak of him, I reckon. I Ve 
raised him to the lumber-trade, but he don’t know 
it all yit. Hunh, Delk ?” 

The young man strode forward and took her 
hand in a grasp slightly too cordial for comfort, 
though Sylvia was aware only of being amused 
at the unfashionable intensity of his manner. 
He loosed his hold of her fingers rather sudden- 
ly. Their texture had given him an indescrib- 
able sense of softness and cold. It seemed to 
him that he had a sort of mental shudder as they 
fell into his palm, touching and clinging with an 
insidious delicacy. He wondered if his rough 
clasp had not rubbed that fine skin into a film 
like a harshly-handled flower petal. 

“ Sylvia’s ben heving kind of a sorry time of it 
here in Chamouni,” said Captain Bylands. “ No 
one to run round with or nothing. I’m no more 
good than a green stick since rheumatism’s wor- 
rying my knee again.” / 

“ Oh, we have very good times at night,” ex- 
postulated Sylvia. “We build big fires in the 
office and pop corn. Uncle tells stories. Some 
of them are very strange,” she added, doubtfully. 
Delk laughed. 

“ Oh, I know those stories !” he said. “ Has 
he told you about that buffalo hunt ?” 

3 


34 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ Yes ; and about the bushwhackers who were 
hanged with picket ropes.” 

They laughed together, exchanging glances of 
intelligence. 

The captain smiled grimly as he got into his 
coat. “ Come on up to supper with us, Delk,” he 
said. 

Delk seemed to hesitate. Sylvia gave him a 
look of gentle encouragement, supposing his un- 
certainty the result of a half-embarrassment. As 
she moved round on the stool the last rays of 
the levelling sun picked out a purple bloom on 
her dark hair and gave her colorless face the 
lucency of melting wax. A black girdle empha- 
sized the slightness of her figure. She looked 
slim and fragile as a cypress. 

Bylands observed her with an interest in which 
a curious reluctance had part. She struck him 
with a grace which seemed subtler than beauty ; 
but whatever her charm was, its expression ap- 
palled him a little — almost as if a phantom beck- 
oned him. 

“ Oh, come on !” commanded the captain, an 
accent of amusement in his voice. “ Unless — ” 
he paused, with a graphic expectancy, his finger 
over his shoulder. 

Delk seemed to redden. “ Why, I accepted your 
invitation long ago,” he declared, lightly. And 
Sylvia fancied his voice had a note of challenge. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


35 


V 

When Sylvia came down -stairs for supper 
she found young Mr. Bylands smoking by him- 
self in the office. The single oil-lamp, fortified 
with a reflector, cast a streak of light on him, 
revealing to Sylvia such details of his personality 
as the evening gloom had hidden. He had an 
athletic figure, the carriage of which was par- 
ticularly good. His brown eyes, with folded un- 
der-lids, looked strangely light in the copper 
tones of his face. As Sylvia came to know his 
ways, it seemed to her that he never sat without 
tilting his chair, and that he was always smoking. 
His expression commonly indicated composure, 
suggesting both sulkiness and dignity. When 
things went wrong his mouth, in a marked way, 
disclosed nervous irritability. 

“ It looks as if I have got back just in time to 
show you what kind of amusements we have 
down here in Casey,” he said, handing Sylvia a 
chair. “ Does smoke annoy you ? Thanks. A 
man tells me there is a social to-night across 
the creek at John Whitby’s. Would you care to 
go?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Sylvia, eagerly. She set one foot 


36 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


in a buckled slipper on the scaling stove-guard. 
Her hands were clasped as she leaned forward. 
“ I should like it very much,” she declared. 

“ We’ll go about seven o’clock,” said Bylands, 
without much active concern. 

Sylvia regarded him almost curiously. He was 
certainly not burdened with a sense of deference. 

“ Do you live in Chamouni ?” she asked, pres- 
ently. 

“ Oh, yes ; but I’m away a good deal looking 
after timber and making contracts. When I’m 
home I board with the Duncans — that brown 
house beyond the office.” 

“ I suppose you are glad to be away most of 
the time ?” 

“Well, Chamouni is a paradise compared to 
places where I’ve been,” said Delk. 

He told in an off-hand way of certain experi- 
ences he had had in wild timber districts, and his 
mention of these things invested him with an inti- 
mation of daring and peril. Sylvia listened intent- 
ly as he spoke of winter nights spent from dark 
till dawn among the rushing logs of a rising river, 
when a sudden “ tide ” had put the boom in danger. 
He had a graphic fashion of speech which made 
Sylvia hear the whirl of the black water and the 
shouts of the logmen, and see the frosty stars 
overhead mix their pale light with the flare of the 
lanterns and fire-baskets along shore. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


37 


Some men came into the office presently, and 
Bylands joined in talk with them, assuming an 
air of indifference which Sylvia felt. He sat rest- 
lessly moving his feet. She decided that he 
wished to impress her with the fact that her pres- 
ence did not embarrass him. 

“ He is afraid I will take him for one of the 
villagers,” thought Sylvia, catching at his mental 
attitude, which seemed to her the proof of some 
spiritual slightness. “I wonder,” she debated, 
“ if my own sense of insufficiency is what makes 
me so alive to other people’s thready traits?” She 
furtively studied Delk. He managed to give her 
a kind of trepidation such as she had felt in list- 
ening to the efforts of a young singer. She was 
tremulous with looking for a break, fearing that 
he would say something which would make inter- 
est in him rather difficult. 

“ I’ll git along all right,” said Captain Bylands, 
when Sylvia mentioned their plans for the evem 
ing. “ You take good care of her, Delk. Thar’s 
a creek to cross and a high fence to climb.” 

“ Oh, then I shall not wear my best gown,” 
said Sylvia. “Will this be good enough, Mr. 
Bylands ?”. 

The captain had disliked her black clothes, and 
she had put them by. She wore to-night some- 
thing which made Delk think of lilacs when they 
slip into blossom against the pale verdancy of 


38 AN EARTHLY PARAGON f 

spring. It seemed to be gathered a good deal 
about the waist and to fall over at the neck in a 
sort of flounce. 

“ Mighty lot of stuff wasted in that thar frock !” 
criticised the captain, pulling at the full sleeve. 

“ It has to make up for my lacks,” smiled Sylvia. 

Her uncle chuckled. “You wouldn’t do to send 
for a missionary, Sylvia; wouldn’t be a mouthful.” 

“ But I should be very good — what there is of 
me,” protested Sylvia, gravely, tying a scarf over 
her black head. “The nearer the bone the 
sweeter the meat.” 

It was pitch-dark as she and Bylands stepped 
into the night. The stars looked small and far, 
mere pin-points in the stretched woof of the sky. 
The lantern in Delk’s hand cast a swaying blur 
of orange on the road, and ahead of them other 
lanterns pulsing in the darkness appeared to 
bristle with fiery quills. The sound of running 
water presently broke the stillness. 

“ A little branch of Knob Lick which we have 
to cross,” explained Bylands. “ Let me try the 
plank first.” 

He set a tentative foot on the board laid across 
the creek, which in the lantern-light seemed to 
gush with blood. Sylvia stepped forward, hold- 
ing his hand. A high fence lifted just beyond. 

“ It’s smooth travelling after we climb this,” 
Bylands said. “ I will get over first.” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


39 


He vaulted across the black rails, and waited 
while Sylvia mounted them slowly, troubled with 
her skirts and long cloak. 

Do you suppose you can lift me down ?” she 
asked from the top, glancing at him with a feign- 
ed doubtfulness. 

Her face shone with a strange witchery, its 
soft whiteness rounded into shape upon the thick 
gloom. Bylands laughed as he set her down. 

“ You’re about as heavy as a shadow !” he said. 

They were crossing a pasture which felt wiry 
to the tread. Weird shadows hung around them, 
and the lantern flare gave way-side fences an odd 
effect of movement ; the rails seemed to leap for- 
ward and wind themselves in snakelike coils, 
which in a moment, without gradations of shade, 
were blotted out. Presently a great barn loomed 
upon Sylvia’s eye. Numbers of buggies stood 
about, and horses tied to the fence turned their 
heads at the approaching light, one ponderous 
dapple-gray looking as if cut from granite, with 
the chisel marks on his flanks. A large house 
stood ahead, its door opening to admit some one 
in advance. A deep step led into a bare hall 
in which a group of young men were talking. 
The girl on the threshold exclaimed at sight of 
Bylands. 

“ Mighty glad to see you back !” she cried. And 
then, as he stepped aside, disclosing Sylvia’s fig- 


40 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


ure, a little stare of surprise came into her face. 
“ Oh,” she said, hastily, “ I thought it was — I 
thought of course it was — ” 

“ Let me introduce Miss Sylvia Bylands,” in- 
terrupted Delk ; “ Miss Whitby.” 

Miss Whitby bowed stiffly, her blank, maidenly 
face modest and virginal to an almost featureless 
degree in its nest of pale red hair. 

“Walk up-steers,” she said; and Sylvia, follow- 
ing her directions, found herself in an upper hall 
giving upon a great room, in each corner of which 
a plump bed heaved itself like a snow-drift. The 
edges of these were piled with young women. 
A group about the stove gave over a laughing 
talk as Sylvia came in. One, a large, white-faced 
girl, with arms like links of sausage, crossed the 
floor. 

“ Give me your things,” she said. 

Sylvia unfastened her wrap, glancing around at 
the rag-carpeting and deal walls. Several chests 
were ranged along the sides of the room. A 
lamp with a red wick burned importantly on a 
stand below a small mirror. 

The white-faced girl observed Sylvia. “ Ain’t 
you Cap’n Bylands’ niece ?” she asked. 

And when Sylvia said yes, she twisted her head 
approvingly. 

“ I ’lowed you must be,” she advanced. “ Who 
carried you over .?” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


41 


“Who—’’ 

“ — Carried you over from Mis’ Lichens’s? 
Did you come with the crowd ?” 

“ Oh, Mr. Delk Bylands brought me.” 

The white-faced girl looked a trifle surprised. 
“Oh — bein’ kin — I reckon,” she debated, tak- 
ing Sylvia’s cloak. When she came back she in- 
clined herself confidentially and asked, “Will you 
whiten ?” 

Sylvia felt a little helpless. The sight of a 
box of powder in the hands of a girl who stood 
before the mirror served to enlighten her. 

“I suppose I had better ‘whiten,’” thought 
Sylvia. “ They may be offended if I don’t.” 

She shook a whiff or two of chalk about her 
face. 

Delk was waiting for her in the hall. 

“There are twenty-three girls in there,” said 
Sylvia, solemnly, “and some of them are very 
good-looking. The queerest thing about them is 
that though they all seem young, they don’t look 
young. Their faces have a kind of sharpness — 
a sort of prematurity. What makes it ?” 

Bylands, never having noticed this effect, made 
no effort at an explanation of its probable causes. 
He realized what she meant only in his percep- 
tion of her own variance. She seemed soft and 
fine and singularly youthful, while the others had 
the stolid keenness which results from an open 


42 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


life in which no careful delicacy intervenes to 
shield the mind from bald facts. 

There were two long rooms down-stairs, with 
little family portraits hanging away up near the 
ceiling. An organ stood gleaming in a corner, 
and as Sylvia sat down in a splint rocker, Miss 
Whitby came towards her, a scared-looking young 
man in the train of her alpaca skirts. 

“ Make you acquainted with Mr. Biles, Miss 
Bylands,” she said, in an unaccented voice of 
routine. 

Mr. Biles let his head down, unhappily shuffling 
his knees together. 

“ Won’t you sit down ?” said Sylvia. 

Mr. Biles, giving her a grateful glance, plunged 
into a chair beside her, his extreme length dimin- 
ishing like that of a shut pocket-knife. 

“ Mighty pretty night,” he ventured. 

“Yes.” She helped him out a little with her 
smile. 

Delk, leaning against the wall, looked and listen- 
ed, rather wondering at her air of interest towards 
the young fellow, who seemed to have shot up into 
manhood long before that estate was ready for him. 

“ She seems a nice little thing,” thought By- 
lands. And he began to speculate upon the pos- 
sibility of so much apparent sweetness being 
compatible with sincerity. 

“Fond of buggy-ridin’ ?” Mr. Biles was asking. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


43 


“ Oh, sometimes, when the roads are good.” 

“ I got a dandy rig,” declared the young man, 
jerking nearer the violet -flecked skirts in his 
enthusiasm ; “ side-bar, and a mare thet kin git 
away with anything on the road. Sired by Bai- 
ley’s Wild Boy. Mighty proud to carry you to 
meet’n’ Sunday night. Exhortin’ at Werner’s, six 
mile down Trace Fork.” 

Sylvia, leaning back in her tall chair, appeared 
to be gently considering, her eyes scanning her 
agatelike nails. “ I shall have to see what my 
uncle says,” she decided. 

As Mr. Biles expressed his intention of “ hon- 
eyin’ round ” the captain with a view to “ fixin’ 
things up,” Miss Whitby sternly summoned him. 

“ Your five minutes is up,” she announced. 

“ Oh, shucks. Miss Jinny ! Can’t I stay a lit- 
tle longer ?” 

“Miss Amy Ann Sparks is waiting on you,” 
said Miss Whitby. 

Mr. Biles went off regretfully, and Bylands 
dropped into his chair. 

“ I am enjoying it !” said Sylvia. 

“Well, you ought to if you like social tri- 
umphs,” said Delk. “ There are fourteen or 
more young men who have the promise of being 
introduced to you. It’s as much as my life is 
worth to occupy this seat.” 

“Don’t go,” cried Sylvia, laying a detaining 


44 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


finger on his arm. She looked at him seriously. 
He was marvellously better bred and better look- 
ing than these others. “Do you know,” she broke 
out, with a sudden little air of confidence, “you 
have got about you a queer suggestion of some- 
thing like romance? I can’t place it, exactly; but 
just now, when you glanced up at that picture — 
Martha Washington, isn’t it ? — I had a flashing 
notion of gondolas and old palace walls, and a 
man looking up for some token in a balcony above 
him — a handkerchief in a window- shutter, per- 
haps.” She assumed a critical j^titude, her head 
aside. “ I think it is because you are so dark,” 
she debated. “A fair man hasn’t half a chance. 
He looks too modern. It takes deep tones to sug- 
gest deep feelings and tragic possibilities. Don’t 
you think so ?” 

Bylands had not been aware of thinking of it 
at all, but he found it oddly satisfactory to have 
his attention drawn to such pleasing attributes of 
himself as had hitherto escaped his notice. 

“You are making fun of me,” he said, but he 
did not believe this. “ Isn’t it rather cruel of you 
to come down here and make fun of us rustics?” 

“ Are you rustic ?” laughed Sylvia. “ You 
seem to me very much like men who live in 
cities, except that you look stronger, and appear 
to have lived in the air and stolen the vigor of 
the hills and rivers.” 


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AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


45 


She paused so abruptly that Bylands, from a 
fascinated interest in her words, came to himself 
with a start. 

“ Mr. Bylands f” she said rather sharply, turn- 
ing on him a sort of breathless face, “ who is it 
— the girl who has just come in — there by the 
door — that beautiful girl in the horrible blue 
gown ?” 

“ Oh, that ?” smiled Bylands, glancing from the 
new-comer to the absorbed countenance beside 
him — “that is Rosetta Valley.” 


VI 

Rosetta Valley was standing on the thresh- 
old, catching at a little strand of faintly yellow 
hair which the outer draught was blowing across 
her face. A number of young men hung about 
her, and the lines of her lips were touched with 
a smile of greeting so tranquil as to convey the 
notion that the very atoms of her flesh felt their 
perfect accord, and fell of nature into happy ex- 
pressions. Her nymphlike figure, in a badly- 
cut, bright blue gown, had a calm poise as she 
tucked away the vagrant lock, a flush spreading 
over the bisquelike texture of her cheek. Some 
one behind her spoke, and she turned her head 


46 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


slowly, her big dark eyes diffusing a sort of child- 
like innocence and helplessness. 

This air of dependence, so incongruous with the 
girl’s large bodily endowment, struck Sylvia with 
an idea of some offspring of the young gods born 
complete in womanhood, but with the untouched 
freshness of infancy in her heart. The antique 
flavor which invested Rosetta Valley suggested 
also that, like the folk of the early world, she was 
not troubled with sustaining an exalted spiritu- 
ality. She looked as if life was a unit with her, 
soul and body an essence undivided even in her 
speculations. 

“ I can’t explain how she makes me feel,” 
sighed Sylvia. “ It rests me to look at such 
perfection of life, and yet she is almost too 
beautiful. I don’t think I would change with 
her.” She imagined that Mr. Bylands looked 
incredulous, and she added, rather emphatically, 
“No, really I wouldn’t change with her. I 
shouldn’t like to be so beautiful as to mean only 
beauty. I don’t think I can make you under- 
stand.” She turned her face, showing its side- 
line, arch, delicately indented, a small half-con- 
temptuous quiver at the lip corners. “You will 
fancy I am jealous, but I am not. I resigned 
myself long ago to plainness, and I don’t mind 
it at all now.” 

“ Plainness ?” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


47 


“Oh, well, ugliness, if you are so exact,” 
laughed Sylvia. “ When I definitely found out 
that my face would never launch a solitary ship, 
I decided to work out my salvation with frocks 
and frillings. I am not very sure,” she put in, 
mournfully, “that I am much better off than 
when I began, but my labor has been a labor 
of love, and I couldn’t be happy to give it over 
now just to be beautiful past the reach of art.” 

“ I suppose,” conjectured Delk, cautiously, 
“that Miss Valley would be thought handsome 
anywhere ?” 

“ Oh yes !” decided Sylvia. “ Does she ever 
get angry or sad, or — anything? Is she always 
so impassive ? I hope she isn’t a little dull.” 

Bylands’s brow contracted. “ I hadn’t thought 
of it,” he said; “I don’t know whether she is 
dull or — ” He looked up. The inexorable 
form of Miss Whitby stood before them. 

“You ben talking over time,” she advised him. 
“Thar’s a whole raft of fellows waiting fer me 
to bring ’em here. I’ll ask you to git up.” She 
gave him a small nod. “ I’ll fix you all right !” 

Bylands laughed. He kept his seat till she 
returned, fetching a dark-browed young man in 
checked clothes. 

“ Make you acquainted with Mr. Adkins, Miss 
Bylands.” 

Delk resigned his chair. Sylvia fell into speech 


48 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


with Mr. Adkins, who casually mentioned the fact 
of his being from Somerset, and not, as she might 
perhaps have supposed, from any rural district. 

In the course of his confidences Sylvia kept an 
eye on the assembly. People were talking in a 
higher key, and chairs were much closer than 
they had been early in the evening. Mr. Biles 
was listening with hopeless apathy to the remarks 
of a wasp-waisted, red- gowned young woman, 
whose vivacity expressed itself in little shrieks. 

Rosetta Valley had taken a chair, and Sylvia 
presently became aware that the group about 
the girl had narrowed. Only one man was pay- 
ing tribute now — a tall figure leaning back in a 
tilted chair— Delk Bylands. He caught Sylvia’s 
glance and smiled. 

Some strange thrill of discomfort shot through 
her veins. She felt on a sudden grown weird 
and witchlike and colorless and meagre. It 
seemed to her as if she could perceive in the 
lines of her face a vague likeness to her father 
as he used to look of nights sitting over his 
books, his cheeks hollow with thought, his thin 
lips drawn as if he buckled to knotty problems. 

At such times his countenance had not been 
one to attract a pleased regard, and Sylvia made 
a quick effort to throw off her sense of sameness 
with it. She bent amiably to Mr. Adkins’s com- 
mentary on men and things, but the young man 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


49 


from Somerset was not enslaved. He reported 
her to the group in the hall as “ too fine-haired ’’ 
to suit him, he being a man who liked a girl 
something more of a “hummer” than Miss By- 
lands. 

Ivliss Whitby having asked Sylvia to play, she 
went to the organ and sang two or three little 
songs, which were much applauded. She was 
conscious of being rather glad when it was time 
to go. As she came down -stairs she saw By- 
lands lighting his lantern in the hall, and a curi- 
ous feeling as of old acquaintance with him 
touched her. 

He was quieter than he had been, but as the 
darkness closed about them, Sylvia discovered 
that she herself was talking too much and too 
fast. 

At the door of the Lichens House Bylands said, 
with an indefinite hesitancy, “ Were you going to 
be busy to-morrow? I have got to drive out to 
one of our mills. It’s a nice drive, if you care 
to go.” 

“ It is kind of you to think of asking me,” said 
Sylvia. “ At what time ?” 

“ Oh, early ! say nine o’clock.” 

Crossing the threshold Sylvia looked back to 
see if Bylands were coming in, but he was already 
gone, and it appeared to her that he had gone 
without much deliberation. 


4 


50 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


The captain was hard at a game of cinch with 
an old man, who, as Sylvia came in, bringing a 
gust of cold air, turned upon her a glance of in- 
terest. He sat broad and high, and his fine face 
had a massive look, as if it was roughhewn, its 
bronze color showing well in a curling fieece of 
white hair. Some indeterminable hint of famili- 
arity in him haunted Sylvia. She waited for her 
uncle to pronounce a formula of introduction, 
but the captain’s mind was occupied. 

“Go on, go on. Valley,” he said. “Thet you, 
Sylvia ? your lead. Bob, I tell you !” 

Sylvia went up-stairs. “Valley !” she said. “I 
suspect he is Rosetta’s father. He is handsome 
enough.” 

She struck a match, which, as the flame sput- 
tered up, licking round the sliver of wood, showed 
her an uncertain image of herself in the glass near 
by. She gave it a glance which lengthened into 
rather a prolonged stare. Was this the same face 
which had been looking at her from this scrap of 
mirror through the dull days, weary, its eyes with- 
drawn, the lids thick } It was still white enough, 
but it looked as if a light streamed through it. 
The very lashes were alert, and the eyes were 
black with expanded pupils looped in slender 
yellowish threads. Sylvia smiled. 

“ What a little pinch of interest will make the 
flat liquor of life foam !” she thought. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


51 


VII 

It gave a new impulse to life to wake in the 
morning with a consciousness of some move- 
ment in the day. Sylvia was ready for the ride 
an hour too soon, but she kept Bylands waiting a 
few moments before she came down. He was 
standing in the office door, his eye on a nervous- 
looking horse hitched to the porch-post. 

After he had put her in the buggy, he untied 
the frisking sorrel and leaped to his seat as the 
horse dashed down the road. 

Sylvia had a glimpse of the drug-shop, the long 
red freight - house, the livery -stable, the engine 
tank, and the mean little houses, under which at 
their approach quantities of black and yellow 
pigs scampered, snorting. 

Beyond the town the road ran through an un- 
even valley, rising on both sides into low knobs 
densely wooded. Moss hung freshly here and 
there about the washed - out roots of trees, and 
long fern fronds, limp with frost, trailed like gray 
sea-weeds over the rocks. Far to the south, a 
great hill, its shadows transparent as if glazed in 
indigo, rose to the dappled sky, its top range of 
bare trees appearing to slant forward like the 


52 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


bayonets of an army lifting from ambush. The 
clear air, the black boughs spread out like fin- 
gers which swerve apart to warmth, the dry road- 
way, the plumlike bloom of the distance, the 
freshening green of the hills — all this flowed into 
Sylvia’s soul and gave her a happy sense of com- 
pleteness. Looking into the passionate land- 
scape, virile, swelling with hills like the muscles 
of a man straining in battle, she thought with 
disgust of the flaccid stretches of earth she had 
hitherto known. 

Small windowless houses now and again squared 
themselves against the stony background. A 
flock of sheep, huddling shapelessly in the wind, 
passed by. Once a calf with a pelt like faded 
seal-skin gambolled awkwardly across their path. 

A man riding a bulky-kneed white horse came 
into sight beyond. As he ranged nearer he 
called out, “ How ’ye, Delk ?” and slacked up. 
“Travellin’ out yender?” he asked. 

“ To the South Mill — yes,” said Bylands. 

“ I was ast to tell you-all at the office ez Lit- 
ten hev got on a tear, and things ain’t goin’ jest 
right. Thar was a rise in the river last night, 
and right smart o’ logs is gittin’ away; some- 
thin’ out o’ fix with the boom, I reckon.” 

Bylands uttered a sound and jerked the reins. 
The horse plunged forward at new speed. 

“ The man we have in charge out here — Litten 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


53 


— is a good man, but I wish he’d do his drinking 
in summer when trade’s dull.” 

“ I shouldn’t think you’d keep a man like that,” 
said Sylvia. 

“Like what ?” 

“That drinks.” 

“ Oh ! it would be hard to find one that don’t. 
We’d have to have him made to order.” He 
laughed. 

“ Most of the men about here drink ?” asked 
Sylvia. 

“More or less.” 

She glanced at his face, the lean cheek swept 
with a swarthy color. “ Do you ?” she ventured. 

Delk looked amused. “ Not right straight 
along,” he said. “ When I feel like taking a drink 
I take it.” 

He spoke with so much candor that Sylvia 
began to feel the possibility of narrowness in her 
views of the whiskey question. Perhaps they were 
tinged with the pallid lustre which that Ohio town 
of hers had shed on all important issues. She 
made no further quest into the matter, accepting 
Delk’s attitude as evidence of a world in which 
liquors might sometimes be respectable, even when 
not served to invalids in mollifying combinations 
of raw eggs and milk. 

The road widened. They were coming into a 
leveler space. Just ahead Sylvia caught sight of 


54 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


something which she took for an upward curl of 
steam, but which in a moment disclosed itself as 
a sinuous snatch of river, pale with sunlight, and 
outlined to a vaporous shape by curving banks. 
A thin murmur, high and sweet, like the music 
of wind harps, reached over the clang of the 
horse’s feet. 

“ The sound of the mill. We’re sawing,” Delk 
explained, smiling at Sylvia’s look of wonder. 

And then, as the strain grew clearer, she saw 
the red roof of a sideless structure filled with 
whirring wheels and sliding belts. They got out 
some little distance from the mill, and picked 
their way through a path heaped with sawdust 
which felt spongy to the tread. Bylands made 
Sylvia a seat on some sawn logs overlooking the 
river. His face was anxious. 

“ Everything is going wrong !” he said. “ Look 
at those logs going by !” 

The river had come up overnight, its color 
changing from a limpid emerald to a dull brown. 
The water had an odd density of effect which made 
its motion seem merely of the surface, as if the 
banks held a section of yellowish porcelain thinly 
overrun with a colorless liquid. The boom, a 
linked line of logs along shore, gleamed black, 
and quantities of drift, twigs, and bark, loosened 
from the head-works above, floated down the cur- 
rent, pulsating like a lace weft on a dark bosom. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


55 


Bylands, eying the logs, shouted some direc- 
tion to three men tranquilly baling out a skiff at 
the water’s edge. They did not seem to under- 
stand. 

“Will you mind my leaving you alone for a 
few moments ?” he asked Sylvia. 

He threw his coat off and ran down the slip- 
pery bank. She saw him wave the men off and 
seize an oar and push the boat out. It was a 
high-sided skiff, and tipped dangerously with his 
weight as he reached after a great log and set it 
round towards the boom, a long pike-pole in his 
hand. He looked tall and slight and strong as 
he oscillated in the boat, and Sylvia got a sense 
of some wild freedom of spirit in him, borne out 
by the sweeping water and whirling drift. What- 
ever in the movement of the currents, in the loom- 
ing hills about, and in the great trees hinted at a 
life boundless and natural, seemed to the girl to 
be expressed humanly in Bylands. 

At her feet the water mouthed the crumbling 
soil, which, as it yielded, tinged the edges of the 
stream to a velvet brown. Delk was some way 
down the river, and she could hear him shouting 
to a man in a dug-out directions for heading off 
the vagrant logs. A v/oodland vigor breathed 
even in his tones. Sylvia, watching him with an 
accelerated interest, noticed favorably the rough 
gray tweeds he wore, his brown throat bared in a 


56 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


loose collar of dark blue flannel. She never 
afterwards saw him cravated and stiffly bosomed 
for leisure hours without a consciousness of loss 
and a waning enthusiasm, for at such times he 
invited comparison with other men she had 
known, and lost his distinction. 

He turned his boat a little, and Sylvia had a 
sudden strong desire to be in the uncertain shell. 
She felt the thirst of adventure. The plunge of 
the current, its eddying and speed emphasized by 
the woven drift, intoxicated her. It seemed to 
her that she was altogether out of the movement, 
as if life, love, all vital possibilities were silently 
sweeping past, while she, hugging the inane com- 
fort of safety, stood forlornly on the bank, an 
atom unspiritualized, because inactive. She had 
an idea of calling out that she wished to try the 
fortune of his boat, when she saw that he had 
got out and was dragging the skiff up-stream by 
the chain, himself walking the boom with an easy 
unconcern, the water dimpling to the dip of the 
logs. Below the mill chute he unwound a coil 
of great rope, and cast an end around a tree, 
handling the stuff like cord as he made fast the 
float. 

Looking up he could see her leaning forward 
intent on his motions, her gown gathered about 
her to keep it free of the damp soil, a long end 
of ribbon falling in a violet scroll far below her 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


57 


feet. She seemed poised for flight, her pallor 
and frailty adding to her illusory air. 

Bylands felt his work in some sort poetized by 
her observance. She made him think of himself, 
and her conceptions of him touched his own con- 
sciousness. Courage, honor, peril, in whatever 
measure these were part of his limited traditions, 
began to color his actions as Sylvia’s influence 
warmed that tropic belt of his nature in which 
germs of sentiment had lain inert. 

“ Do you know,” he said, panting from his climb 
up the chute, “ I believe a man could do great 
things if you sat by watching as if you thought 
him capable.” 

“I should like to be some one’s inspiration,” 
said Sylvia, modestly. “ I would rather tie my 
favor to the arm of the champion than be the 
champion himself. It is much to be capable of 
heroism, it is more to make others capable 
of it.” 

Delk did not follow out this notion very care- 
fully. They were stepping across the padded 
ground to the mill, and while Bylands talked to 
the sawyer, Sylvia glanced through a delicate 
powder of sawdust at the log moving towards 
an erect saw which sliced it like cake. The whir 
of the machinery confused her for some time af- 
ter they had gone down the road behind the 
restless sorrel. 


58 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ It is SO new and so strange,” she said, mus- 
ingly. 

Bylands studied her abstracted face. “I am 
used to it all,” he said, “ but to-day it seems al- 
most new to me too. It’s you, I reckon.” 

“ Oh !” murmured Sylvia. And as he asked, 
heartily, “ Will you go again ?” she said, “ When- 
ever you will take me.” 

Afterwards she remembered with displeasure 
how cordially she had expressed her willingness. 


VIII 

It had begun to rain, so Sylvia discovered, as 
she held her hand out the door and felt her palm 
sting with sharp drops. Earth and sky were one 
in the misting darkness. The woe-begone fir at 
the porch corner passed indefinitely into the 
shadows. Farther off, the drug -shop window 
painted the roadway in a wet daub of green. 
Through the dampness came the sound of men’s 
voices, mixing with bursts of laughter and the 
twang of a banjo. 

“They are having a good time down around 
the freight-house,” Sylvia remarked, shutting the 
door. “ Some one fired a rifle a minute ago. I 
hope nobody is killed.” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


59 


The captain reassured her. He was sitting with 
his feet on the old bar, getting his pipe in working 
order for the night. The broom straw with which 
he had been prodding the pipe-stem w’as thickly 
furred with a brown pigment, and he threw it 
aside. 

“ They’re just projecting,” he said. “ How’d 
you-all come out last night at the party ?” 

“ Beautifully,” said Sylvia, beating a little tune 
on an upturned wash-basin. '•'‘She was there, 
you know, the fair Rosetta Valley. You haven’t 
half -bad judgment, uncle ! She is so lovely I 
felt like weeping when I looked at her. She im- 
presses me as a masterpiece of art might.” 

“ As a—” 

“ Oh, you know ! Perfection is always a little 
too much for us. We struggle up towards it as far 
as we can, but our rapture of appreciation is bur- 
dened with a sort of dull wonder that we can’t 
reach far enough.” 

“ I d’know as I git the hang of that,” the cap- 
tain admitted, “ but it sounds like it meant some- 
thing.” 

“ The clang of an empty vessel,” laughed Syl- 
via, and she shook her head as the captain re- 
butted this pretty humility. “ It’s true,” she said, 
wisely, “ I am only about half as smart as I ap- 
pear. The glitter is mica, not gold. I generally 
think what I am going to say before I say it. I 


6o 


AN tARTHLY PARAGON 


have got to. There isn’t much stuff of thought, 
and it requires arrangement. When it comes to 
real mind” — she struck his knee lightly — “you 
are the one, captain !” 

“ Aw, shucks, Sylvia !” 

“ It’s so. I’ll tell you our difference : I am 
spiritually like a figure in a fashion-plate, nice 
and fine and rather interesting, but impossible 
without drapery. You are a Greek marble, mag- 
nificently nude, a mental shape which needs no 
veiling.” 

The captain’s three-cornered lids expressed a 
shrewd appreciation. “I think better of myself 
than I did,” he owned. “You ain’t as pink- 
cheeked as Rosetty, but — ” 

“ Thank you,” broke in his niece, with a feint 
of meekness ; “ I think I shall get on. Is Rosetta 
an only child ?” 

“ The last of four. Her maw was as fine a fig- 
ure of a woman as I ever laid eyes on — the 
picture of health ; she went in a galloping con- 
sumption just the same. It’s always the best nut 
that tempts the worm. Notice that man in here 
with me last night ? Rosetty’s father. Fine fel- 
ler, Bob is ; thinks Rosetty’s the greatest thing 
going. When she was away to school. Bob he 
liked to mourned hisself to death !” 

“ She's been to school, then ?” 

“ Two years. But it never hurt her none. She 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


6l 


came back just like she went away — sweet as 
ever. If she learned anything I never see any 
difference.” The captain gave a chuckle. “ So 
she was over to Whitby’s last night ? Well, well 1 
She must hev got wind thet Delk was back.” 

Sylvia glanced up sharply. “Why ?” she said. 

“Just wrapped up in him,” explained her 
uncle. “He’s a lucky dog, thet feller! Hes a 
mighty taking way with women.” 

Sylvia withdrew her eyes and yawned a little 
under a trellis of slim fingers. 

“ It must flatter him to be the object of so dis- 
tinguished preference — the toast of the county.” 
She was aware of picking her words, but her voice 
sounded careless. “ I saw him talking to her last 
night. No doubt he is far from insensible to so 
much sweetness.” 

“Oh, he’s pretty well gone,” the captain de- 
clared, smartly thumping his pipe. “ Folks that’s 
in love ought to^— ” he stopped to blow into the 
stem. “ Him and Rosetty’s ben a-talking in cor- 
ners for about a year now — ever since they got 
engaged.” He struck a match. 

“ Oh,” said Sylvia, presently, in rather a languid 
voice, “they are — betrothed then — you were 
saying ?” 

“ For a year. This is the meanest tobacco they 
ben giving me lately ! Nothing but ground leaves 
and sawdust.” And as Henry Dye just then came 


62 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


noisily into the office, the captain fell upon him 
savagely. “Look a-here, Dye, what do you call 
this stuff you folks are selling for tobacco ?” 

Sylvia heard Dye’s retort as from a long dis- 
tance. The room felt close. She got up and 
went out on the porch, drawing the door shut. 
She was aware of a strange sense of humilia- 
tion as if some one had idly struck her across 
the lips. Following it came first a hot resent- 
ment at Bylands, and then a cool rush of reason 
which made her laugh a little painfully. 

“ I am offended with him because he did not 
say at the instant of our meeting, ‘ Miss Bylands, 
pray do not look upon me with favor, my heart’s 
doors are not yet red-sealed, but they are blue- 
ribboned, and even more secure.’ ” 

The wet wind blew into her eyes the loose 
locks above her forehead. The half-romantic, 
half-compassionate interest she had begun to 
take pleasure in now assumed a more actual 
character. Time had felt the fillip of an enliven- 
ing possibility, and Sylvia had been surprised 
and even amused that its blank face could in 
so easy a fashion take an expression of alertness. 
She seemed to herself perfectly certain that her 
satisfaction in Bylands was not likely to be cul- 
minative. His figure, indeed, charmed her with 
its suggestion of the forest ; the look, gait, man- 
ner of its mortality set a prick to her fancy. But 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


63 


she suspected that the fine mould held no vital 
germ, and this deficiency, she thought, would 
limit any admiration she might feel. 

Now that Bylands was put before her in the 
unattainable character of a man contracted to 
another woman’s bright eyes, it became clear to 
Sylvia that his inaccessibility gave him an illog- 
ical sort of value. She began to fear that he was 
perhaps far more shrewd than she had thought. 
She remembered her small encouragements, her 
little friendly wiles to mitigate his supposed bash- 
fulness. Perhaps this young man had set himself 
to a trial of her favor, and was smiling with himself 
at the result. She determined to use him cold- 
ly, and then decided that a frigid bearing would 
serve only to accent any notion of her cordiality 
which Bylands might be pleasantly cherishing. 

The next day, after dark, Delk came into the 
hotel office and sat down with an air of establish- 
ing himself for the evening. Sylvia greeted him 
courteously, but in some odd way he felt chilled 
by her smiling nod, and addressed himself to the 
captain. Sylvia, listening to their talk of tides and 
specifications and improved machinery, was con- 
scious of sitting in judgment on Bylands. She 
brought to bear on his conversation a lucidity of 
criticism which had a new flavor of satisfaction 
in his occasional lapses. His speech was not the 
speech of books. He did not talk as men talk 


64 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


whose minds are saturated in literature, but 
Sylvia had to admit that he knew how to put his 
ideas in square shapes, though his idioms some- 
times frisked dangerously near the slang line. 

Bylands felt to the innermost pulse of his con- 
sciousness this posture of Sylvia’s faculties. He 
had been half afraid of her in her former mood 
of indulgence. Now he decided that her flatter- 
ing amiabilities had been merely painted flour- 
ishes, that she had tried her colors on his blank- 
ness, and smiling at the raw contrasts of tone, 
had dropped her brush. 

He grew horribly alive to himself. His clothes 
assumed a backwoods look. A nervous coldness 
benumbed his fingers, and his shoes became of a 
stolid texture, hanging about his feet like wood 
frames. His discomfort displayed itself in a 
growing rancor towards the captain, with whom 
he began to dispute some question. 

“ I shall go away,” said Sylvia’s soft voice, 
stealing over his perceptions, “if you two are 
going to keep this up. I don’t want to hear scrip 
and percentage. I want you to be very amusing, 
and make up to me for the stupid day I have 
spent. Nothing has happened except that the 
Hines girls’ dog got into a fight with a yellow 
puppy this morning. It wasn’t much of a contest; 
the puppy was too soft. He merely yelped and 
rolled.” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


65 


“ Well,” put in the captain, “ we’ll hev to stir 
things up. Let’s see ! If Rosetty — say, Delk, you 
speak to Rosetty, won’t you ? Tell her Sylvia’s 
pretty lonesome. Going over soon ?” 

“ Oh, I reckon !” 

“ Knob Lick’s tol’able high for fording, ain’t 
it ? Cross it last night 

“Yes. It was mighty high.” 

Happening to glance at Sylvia, he caught a 
gracious smile. 

“ How unkind of you,” she murmured, spread- 
ing her hands to the fire, her white cheeks silken 
in the dancing blaze of the open stove door — “ how 
unkind of you not to tell me of your special proud 
interest in Miss Valley !” 

Delk’s ear took a sense of mockery in her 
tone, and his eye in the tilt of her small head. 
He changed the position of his chair. “ I didn’t 
suppose you would care anything about it,” he 
said, and Sylvia felt taken down. 

She maintained, however, her air of formal 
courtesy as time went on and spring began to be 
lightly revealed, a mere phantom of itself. Green 
films hung in certain tree-tops. In others yet 
barren of buds a delicate amber mist deepened, as 
if the sap were quickening. Grass thickened in 
the low lands, and on the slopes a verdant atmos- 
phere breathed about thorny shrubs. 

At the Lichens House a languorous fashion of 
5 


66 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


house-cleaning was in progress.' It seemed to 
Sylvia to consist chiefly in a continual wetting of 
floors, which dried in streaks and were at once 
wet again. The long halls were specially marked 
out for these ever-renewed floodings, and Selesty 
Miggins, with skirts held fast between her knees, 
slushed the soaped water about with a broom of 
which the straws were orange-colored with pro- 
longed damp., Mrs. Lichens, in a panting state 
of hurry, plunged around, dabbling at a window- 
pane gray with winter smoke, or wildly waving a 
long cloth at furry chair rungs. 

“God knows I ain’t able fer no sech slavin,” 
she told Sylvia. “But what kin yeh do when 
you are a widder without no husband ? Selesty 
ain’t no help. Beaux is all her chune. I tell her 
she’ll see the day she wish she never gazed upon 
men. Fair to look upon they may be, but in the 
long-run, mostly, as the good book says, they bite 
like sarpints and sting like adders.” 

“I hain’t got the first sign of a beau,” pro- 
tested Selesty. 

“You’re willin’ to hev’,” retorted Mrs. Lichens. 
“Hain’t I seen your eyes wallin’ round todes 
Henny Dye ? I’d go without a man if I couldn’t 
git nothin’ but a scrub. Coin’ fer a walk. Miss 
Sylvia?” 

Sylvia nodded as she tiptoed across the gleam- 
ing boards. She stood for a moment on the step, 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


67 


thinking of walking towards the mill office, but 
remembered that Delk would likely be there, and 
determined on another direction. 

She had seen a good deal of Bylands in the 
past month. He came often to the hotel, and a 
certain degree of good-fellowship was established 
between them. The savor of sentiment which 
had clung about their earlier acquaintance ap- 
peared to have passed away. Sylvia fell into a 
manner of easy friendliness, which, though it 
piqued Bylands by reason of its subtle differ- 
ence from her first bearing, convinced him of 
her liking. They seldom spoke of Rosetta Val- 
ley. Sometimes, just at sundown, Sylvia saw By- 
lands riding towards Winklers. She knew he 
was going to see Rosetta, and a singular flatness 
of feeling overcame her at the thought that she 
must pass the evening with no other compan- 
ions than the captain and such friends of his as 
might chance in. It was scarcely worth while 
for this audience to have spent any time at her 
tiring. 

Noticing that she always wore colors of lilac, 
lavender, and purple. Bylands had mentioned the 
circumstance. 

“Yes,” said Sylvia. “Most women wear the 
color that is in vogue. Some pick out and stick 
by what they consider becoming. One as white 
as I am would be expected to wear red. But I 


68 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


don’t care to be ‘lighted up,’ and I wear pensive 
colors because they hit off the suggestiveness of 
my looks. If I do not intimate moods, caprices, 
esprit^ I am nothing. So I wrap myself in the pur- 
ple stole of reverie. Some time there will come 
along an intelligent being who will see what I am 
driving at, and then I shall be repaid.” 

She decided to-day to wander towards Knob 
Lick, the water of which was green as jade as 
she stood looking into it, her heels deep in the 
jagged gravel, which, along the streamlet’s edge, 
glittered with thin ice melting in a dainty filigree. 
A man striding a rusty white horse, a meal-bag 
slung before him, rode into the shallow ford at 
the opposite side. Beyond him the toll-gate pole 
of Winklers, still descending, looked like a quiv- 
ering finger. Sylvia watched the horse, lift his 
feet, heavy with plashing water. In front of him 
the air was spangled with glassy atoms, in the 
midst of which the rough nodding head of the 
horse and the lolling figure of his rider ad- 
vanced with an odd effect of unreality. 

Brown rocks stuck sharply through the water, 
nibbling at the little ripples, which shuddered past 
as if they felt the hurt. 

“ So time gnaws at me,” thought Sylvia, glan- 
cing away with drawn brows. 

Another horseman was taking the stream at the 
Winklers side ; the horse, a sorrel, brightened like 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 69 

a copper cast as he plunged forward, wetting his 
skin. 

Sylvia presently saw that the rider was By- 
lands, who, as he caught sight of her, cried out. 
He had a look of eagerness, as of one who bears 
news. The freshness of the morning dashed his 
cheek and rang clear in his tone. 

“ I was just coming to find you,” he exclaimed. 
“ What do you think I have just heard ?” 


IX 

“ I won’t attempt to guess,” said Sylvia, “ un- 
less some one is dead.” 

“ Dead ! Do I look as if I carried — Oh, come !” 

“ I’m afraid I should be glad of almost any in- 
telligence,” smiled Sylvia. 

Bylands was trying to make his horse stand. 
‘‘It’s a dance — whoa, Mac! — over at the county- 
seat — a real country -dance. I only found out 
about it this morning. Will you go.^” 

He smote the sorrel's neck, his figure giving to 
the animal’s curvets. 

“You’ll go, won’t you.?” he repeated, rather 
anxiously, though his voice had something like 
an accent of domination, as if he were prepared 
to resent a refusal. 


70 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ With you ?” asked Sylvia, a certain timidity 
in her tone. 

“Why, yes!” 

Sylvia straightened her little straw-hat, holding 
the ribbons under her chin. Her glance still 
questioned him. 

“ Rosetta ?” she suggested. “ She will go with 
us?” 

Bylands’s dark face flushed in such sort as if 
he had inwardly smiled. “ Oh,” he exclaimed, 
“she is over there now. Her aunt lives there.” 

“I shall be very glad to go,” said Sylvia at 
once, rather formally. 

The sorrel, still plunging, made a short for- 
ward run, and Delk, holding in the reins, called 
back, “We’ll have to start before early candle- 
lighting.” 

The day suddenly brightened for Sylvia. She 
felt like one who gropes in the dark, listlessly 
dragging himself towards deeper shadows, and 
who, at a turn of the road, catches the leaping 
red of a cottage window. 

She thought of the social gatherings she had so 
detested in the life which lay behind her. Out of 
the gray cells of apathetic memory stole a pale 
phantasm of the well-ordered rooms of that placid 
town, the big-bowled lamps benignantly lighting 
some evening festival. The stuffed chairs and 
sofas ranged themselves against the gilt-papered 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 71 

walls, their cushions hid in the black-silk gowns 
of the village ladies, who held their handkerchiefs 
in embroidered bunches as they talked with one 
another. Here and there in groups the younger 
women chatted, their eyes turning towards the 
hallway, in which lounged the two or three un- 
married men of the town, aware of their import- 
ance, and indifferent to smiles. The hostess, 
vaguely troubled about the ice-cream ; the min- 
ister, with his air of professional cordiality ; the 
odor of coffee ; the remarks of the village wit, a 
bald-headed gentleman, who laughed at his own 
humor — all this set itself in array against the rus- 
tic rout to which Sylvia was looking. 

If it had no other charm, it would at least have 
the grace of unlikeness. Its colors would be 
splashed in rough frescos, for Casey County gave 
all its effects broadly. There were here no Meis- 
sonier bits to tease the eye. 

Sylvia felt herself expand with a large sense 
of freedom as the captain and Bylands tucked 
her into the narrow buggy, and the sorrel dashed 
forward into the twilight. 

They crossed Knob Lick, passing through 
Winklers, which seemed to climb a hill in rather 
a breathless fashion, and tumble exhaustedly 
down the farther side. A white little church with 
a stile, a blacksmith-shop, barns, hogs, a saddle- 
horse neighing outside a long brown house — these 


72 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


wheeled by, and the open country was reached. 
Before them lay a long stretch of soft road, striking 
into low hills blued with gathering shadows. The 
whole brown landscape, marked here and there 
with trees, the fragile budding of which the even- 
ing hid, was a little as if covered with deerskin 
and planted with stark antlers. An expression of 
impassive strength touched the darkening view. 
The land lay as if unaware of its mightiness, like 
a giant asleep, in whose very inertness is force. 

It set in to rain, and Bylands put up the buggy- 
top against the fine warm drizzle. The sky 
dropped low and black, and pasture ’ fences 
threaded the gloom like a combed -out cloud. 
There was a lonely murmur of water, and they 
came presently to a river which struck paleness 
on the night’s face. 

As the horse took the ford Sylvia trembled and 
laid hold of Bylands’s arm. He laughed and 
leaned towards her with a sense of protection, 
straightening himself as they came up the steep 
bank. Shortly after, they fetched up before a 
sturdy white house of many lighted windows — 
an old- looking house, which, from the bulging 
gallery about its upper story, seemed to stand 
with arms akimbo. A dark old woman, with 
foreign ear-rings dangling over her yellow neck, 
bustled out to receive them. Delk went away 
with the horse, and Sylvia was taken up-stairs to 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


73 


another of the great bedrooms, with which she 
had now got rather familiar. Supper was wait- 
ing. The dance was to be at the court-house 
over the way — a pink brick structure which Syl- 
via had caught a slight glimpse of. Girls in 
muslin gowns chattered as they tied each other’s 
sashes. Rosetta Valley, in a shapeless white 
dress, overblued in the wash, a gilt pin in her 
tumbling gold hair, looked wistfully towards Syl- 
via over the pink satin bow at her matchless 
throat. 

Presently she came over to Sylvia, and said, 
“ Mr. Bylands is here, isn’t he ?” 

“ Oh yes,” smiled Sylvia. “ He was good 
enough to bring me. I felt a little as if I were 
imposing on his kindness. He wouldn’t have 
come, I know, but that you were here.” 

Rosetta’s face, which had seemed almost sad, 
beamed as if a rosy light smote it. “ I’m mighty 
glad you came,” she cried. “ Don’t you mind 
about Delk — he’s the best man ! Just can’t do 
enough for folks !” 

Sylvia regarded her with a slowly dawning 
smile. You must thank him for bringing me,” 
she said. 

Whereat Rosetta, with a gesture of fondness, 
linked her arm in Sylvia’s. “ Let’s go down to 
supper,” she said. “ How little your hands are, 
ain’t they?” 


74 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


X 

The table was spread in a narrow uncarpeted 
room along the back of the house. Numbers of 
people were eating — ^girls, some of whom Sylvia 
had seen up-stairs, and young men, whose heads 
above the dishes disclosed sunburnt hues, and 
low brows plastered with long centre locks. 

Jelly -cakes in slim -stemmed glass comports 
spread frosty gleams at intervals over the laden 
crockery. 

At one end of the room a door opened into a 
kitchen, in which several black women were busy. 
The other end gave upon the side street, and this 
door being also ajar, tobacco -smoke mingling 
with men’s voices stole in. 

Bylands, glancing towards the dining-room, saw 
Sylvia sitting at the table with Rosetta Valley. 
He stood for a moment looking at them, biting 
his mustache. Then he went in and took a 
place opposite the two, talking gayly, but not 
catching their eyes when he could avoid it. He 
seemed paler than usual, and more refined in his 
dark clothes, a narrow string-tie of black below 
his stiff collar. 

Rosetta, happily aware of him, ate placidly, 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


75 


biting clean circles from her bread. Beside her, 
Sylvia took little sips of strong coffee, her slight 
wrists resting on the table. There was a slack 
string of very small blackish pearls about her 
throat, and her dress, breathing the odor and 
color of heliotropes, duplicated the purplish shad- 
ows around her eyes. 

After supper a heavy - looking young fellow 
with a red neck-scarf lounged up to Rosetta. 

“ My cousin Tom,” she said to Sylvia. 

He had come to take her over to the court- 
house. She looked towards Bylands. 

“You won’t be mad?” she whispered. She 
was very pretty in the airy white thing she had 
flung over her head. Her eyes were like slashes 
of brown velvet. 

Delk smiled indulgently, giving her a little push. 
“ No, no,” he said. 

Sylvia, standing by, had thrown an end of 
her long cloak about her head. Under it she 
had the air of a hooded nun in a gray livery, 
her face as white and fine as a carving of dead 
ivory. 

They passed a small room, in the door of 
which several men were looking. A girl in a 
thick brown dress, very young, with a fringe of 
bright hair across her brow, sat trembling in a 
corner. Across the threshold, as it were on 
guard, a loutish fellow with stretched legs, his 


76 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


head on his breast, stupidly sat in a chair too 
small for him. 

“ Look-a-here, Wells,” expostulated a man in 
the outer group, “ I’ll take Sudie over to the 
dance, and you kin come on when you feel e’k’l 
to it— hur ?” 

“ I jest as lieves wait,” cut in the girl. 

Wells swaggered in his chair. “Ef she don’t 
want to wait on me till my head gits level — ” 

“ I do, Joe ! I’ll wait.” She signalled the 
others. “ You go on. He’ll be all right after a 
while. Look like thet thar whiskey they’re sell- 
in’ down at Beasley’s jest makes a man crazy. 
They ought to be shut up.” 

Bylands drew Sylvia past. They crossed a 
muddy reach of roadway, mounted some steps, 
and entered a lighted hall, at the side of which 
the various offices of the building were open for 
the night. 

A boy called “ Tickets !” and as Delk threw 
him two slips, Sylvia caught the lilt of a banjo 
and the screech of a fiddle in tuning. The mu- 
sicians — two negroes, startlingly black against the 
plaster wall — sat in a corner, their faces solemn as 
death. Heaps of coats and shawls filled the win- 
dow-seats, in which several girls sat high, talking 
to their friends. Some of the men were booted, 
and Sylvia saw here and there on a heel the gleam 
of a spur. Some looked like the men of towns. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


77 


One black-haired girl had on a yellow satin gown, 
the papery flounce of which crackled as she 
walked. She carried herself importantly, greet- 
ing Rosetta Valley with an embrace. 

“ Mighty mixed crowd,” she said. “I’m awful 
glad you come ; hardly any of our set’s here. 
Who’s that girl talking to Mr. Delk Bylands ? 
Thin as a taller dip, ain’t she ?” 

Sylvia felt a nervous rush in her temples as she 
overheard this. 

The dance began. It was a sort of cotillon in 
which every one knitted hands, wheeling wildly 
round and round, or separating in grotesque 
groups, as a busy young man with an anxious 
brow called the figures. 

Sylvia and Bylands sat in a window watching the 
others. Sylvia listened to the mingled thump and 
scream of the instruments, smiling at scraps of talk 
which reached her as the dancers circled past. 

Some women with babies in their arms looked 
in from the hall, exchanging comments, their hips 
swaying. 

“Thet thar girl o’ Bob Valley’s, she gits away 
with the hull kit ’n’ bilin’ of ’em,” said one, eying 
Rosetta, who was dancing with her cousin. 

Her movements had the gracefulness of a wind- 
swept flower, and Sylvia, half closing her eyes as 
she gazed after the rhythmic figure, seemed to see 
cloudy gauzes, light as foam, replace the girl’s 


78 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


starched cottons. Her low brows, burnished 
with dull gold, appeared as if empurpled with ce- 
lestial roses. She might have been a creature of 
the days of Silenus, rushing on rosy feet from an 
amorous satyr. 

Her shadowy eyes continually sought Bylands 
as the changes of the dance brought her in range 
of him. She was posturing for his pleasure, like 
an Eastern slave before her sultan, and Delk, 
catching the entreaty of her soft glances, paid 
them now and then the approval of a nod. He 
held her in view, feeling some spiritual tune in 
him keep time to her circlings. 

“ She is lovely,” he said, suddenly, with the in- 
tensity of a newly- impressed conviction, almost 
unaware of the girl to whom he spoke. 

Sylvia’s consciousness opened to his abstracted 
exclamation as to a swift thrust of steel. Some- 
thing hard and bitter modelled itself in her deli- 
cate lips. She reverted to the black-haired girl’s 
comparison, and her eyes strayed to the candles 
sputtering in pewter holds along the mantel-shelf. 

“I am like them,” she thought, sickly — “so 
mean a figure, the flame at the top is nothing.” 

She looked again at Rosetta, and dully won- 
dered if there was any power equally cogent 
with beauty. She thought of the women whose 
chains bound Pericles and Caesar, and spurred by 
the ideas which they suggested, her mind dashed 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


79 


through a dim historic garden, grasping here 
and there at some conspicuous flower flaunting 
on a deathless stalk. 

She breathed a little fast. The dancers were 
shadows, and in the space they had filled, other 
figures rose. Compelling eyes unfolded and re- 
garded her. Lifting themselves on the purple 
cushions of fantasy, certain women of story cast 
down the ages long looks still powerful to win 
men’s interest from the living loveliness around 
them. A strange light fired Sylvia’s glance. 

Bylands, listening to her talk, felt himself com- 
pletely interested. He gave her an undivided 
attention. The dance ended and another began, 
but the conversation in the window -seat went 
on. Rosetta Valley, missing the encouragement 
of Bylands’s looks, moved with waning concern, 
her childlike face saddening to an open misery. 

The third dance ended before Sylvia, with a 
sudden air of recollection, said “ Oh, they have 
stopped again ! You have been very good to let 
me keep you so long. I am going to repay you. 
I am going to send you to Rosetta.” 

“ Not yet,” stammered Delk, coming to him- 
self with a start. 

Sylvia slipped down from the window-sill, her 
smile a smile of dismissal. An unwonted pink- 
ness stained her cheeks, and her teeth reflected 
the slight color of her lips. 


8o 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Henry Dye brought up the anxious -browed 
young man, whom he introduced to her consider- 
ation as Mr. Amos Salt. 

Mr. Salt brought his heels together. “ ’Gaged 
for the next dance — waltz-cudrille ?” 

Sylvia listened graciously, sensible that By- 
lands was scowling. 

Mr. Salt crooked his arm. “ Promenawde ?” 
he suggested. 

They walked down the long halls, passing 
numbers of heated couples, the men mopping 
their brows, handkerchiefs tied inside their wilt- 
ing collars. 

Sylvia sat down on some steps near the outer 
door, Mr. Salt solicitously fanning her with a 
piece of a law document which perhaps had fig- 
ured in a late suit. As he talked, Sylvia caught 
a word or two on the sheet: “ Case 173. State 
of Kentucky vs. John — ” 

“ Stranger here ?” asked Mr. Salt, after a sum- 
mary of his own life and adventures. 

Sylvia, explaining her presence in the village, 
observed a new ray of light on the staircase side. 
Some one had bpened the door of a small room 
at the right, and looking into it, Sylvia saw By- 
lands leaning against the mantel, his eyes on the 
upturned face of the girl sitting hard by. His 
expression was compunctuous and resentful and 
slightly sullen. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


8l 


Rosetta’s voice was not low. Sylvia could dis- 
tinguish an accent of reproach in it. 

“You oughtn’t to blame me for it,” she was 
saying. “ I can’t help feeling bad. You hevn’t 
ben over for a whole week. Paw’s noticed it.” 

“ I have been busy,” said Bylands. He seemed 
to feel the ungraciousness of his position, and 
kicked at the fender in an exasperated style. 

“But you’ll hev more time now the river’s 
dropping. Won’t you come over every other 
night, Delk, like you used to ?” 

Her tones thickened, and at the appeal to his 
memory some poor ghost of sentiment stirred in 
him. He pushed a chair round, and sat beside 
her, giving her hand a gentle pat. 

“You mustn’t let a man see how much you 
care for him,” he said, smiling at her tears. 

“ I can’t help it,” breathed Rosetta, a drop 
dashing down her cheek. “I just don’t care 
what any person thinks. When you’re mean to 
me I want to die.” 

“ Mean to you, Rosetta ?” 

“If I see you even speaking — to — another 
woman. I know I’m a goose.” 

“ Yes, Rosetta.” 

“ You’re not mad ?” 

“ Good heavens, no !” 

“ Because I want to ask you something. Miss 
Bylands is real sweet, Delk.” 

6 


82 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Delk waited for her to go on. 

“Do you think” — her tone was confidential, 
and she was blushing. “You see, it’s this way. 
Her clothes are the pretties’ things ! — and paw 
says I can hev just anything I want when I get 
my wedding fixings. Do you reckon she’d help 
me pick ’em out? Aunt Mag says I better not 
wait till fall to get my clothes. She says she’d 
get ’em right along, and not be all hurried at the 
last. Would you ask her if you was me ?” 

Bylands got up, turning towards the fire. 

“I — don’t know, Rosetta,” he stammered. “ I 
don’t think I — would.” 

The music had struck up again, but Sylvia de- 
cided not to dance. She made an excuse of 
weariness to Mr. Salt, begging him not to lose 
the set on her account, and Bylands presently 
found her in a corner of the stairway, her chin 
in her clasped hands. 

She looked down listlessly at him. All her 
former radiance was gone. Above her thick 
lavender neck-frills her face was a small silvery 
fleck, intangible as a moonbeam among the stair- 
case shadows. 

“ I’m afraid you are tired,” surmised Bylands. 
His voice had a tone which startled him. 

“ I should like to go home,” said Sylvia. 

He looked at his watch. “ I will have the 
horse around in a minute,” he said. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


83 


It was very dark when they started. At first 
the scant lights of the village streaked the wet 
ground and shook redly in pools along the way. 
But after the last house was passed the very 
road seemed to disappear, and all Sylvia’s strain- 
ing eyes could take in were the adjacent hills, 
which had an effect of spreading nearer, a faint 
grayness of sky along their summits. The horse 
was distinguishable only as a slight pulsation in 
the forward gloom, as of a dissipating cloud. 

Bylands suddenly made a sound of annoyance. 
“ They have forgotten to give us a lantern,” he 
said, “ and I’m afraid to turn.” 

‘‘ Can’t you see where to drive ?” 

“ Oh, the horse knows the way,” he replied, 
evasively, thinking of the ford, and feeling in his 
pockets for a match. “Would you believe,” he 
reported, amazedly, “that I have only got one 
match — a man who smokes the way I do ?” 

He struck it. The blue flag of flame fluttered 
like a ribbon, and rose in a vermilion haze. 

“ I thought so,” said Bylands, looking about. 

They were something out of the road, and he 
had heard the snap of twigs under the horse’s 
feet. 

“ I shouldn’t care to run into any of these 
stumps,” he remarked, getting out. 

The match was burning low, a wiry blackness 
writhing in the flame like a tortured worm. By- 


84 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


lands turned the horse into the road again, the 
little light disclosing with its last flare the steep 
downward bank, with its oblique wagon - ruts, a 
rush of black water, and a higher bank beyond. 
Bylands knew the river must be rising, but he said 
nothing, and they began to go down the slope. 
Sylvia started at the hollow gurgle of the water 
as they took the stream. The buggy went side- 
ways as if dragging with the current. It struck 
something hard, and above the sound of the wa- 
ter the clash of the wheels on the rocks was like 
the grind of ravenous teeth. 

Sylvia felt oddly calm, leaning back in the seat. 
She had a sense of abandonment, as of one in a 
superhuman grasp. The buggy appeared sudden- 
ly to become very light. The water was unseen, 
but Sylvia felt a cold ripple about her feet. 

“ Do not be frightened,” said Bylands, in a low 
voice. “There ! we’ve struck bottom again.” 

The grating sound set up once more. The 
buggy jolted and lurched upward as the horse’s 
feet buried themselves in the bank. Sylvia gave 
a little moan of relief, and then it seemed to her 
as if Delk’s weight had been cast backward by 
some upheaval of the ground. 

She heard him exclaim, and in an instant the 
horse’s shape, sharp-eared, rose straight ahead, 
perfectly erect, as if he had ramped on his hinder 
legs and stood motionless. She knew in a flash 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 85 

that he had missed the slanting road, and had 
started up the steep rise. 

“ Don't move,” said Bylands. 

He seemed to be getting out. The buggy 
pitched airily, as if it balanced on a single spoke, 
and Sylvia felt a wheel-rim in her hand. There 
was a jerk. She had a sense of falling, and felt 
her cheek strike the soft clay of the bank, which, 
as the buggy moved upward — Bylands at the 
horse’s head — let her slip down and down till 
her foot caught in something that stayed her 
weight. She could hear Bylands urging the 
horse. It seemed a great effort. She had a feel- 
ing that the lumbering vehicle must pull horse 
and man into the muttering river just below. 

There was a strange lack of interest in her per- 
ceptions. She felt like sleeping. It was very 
still, and the drip of the warm rain on her face 
was as soothing as a gentle hand-stroke on the 
hair. A soft ease stole through her, and her 
head appeared to be sinking infinitely back in a 
pillow of down. 

Bylands, having got the horse in the upper 
road, reached to fix the rugs about Sylvia, a word 
of reassurance on his lips. 

“ That was a narrow slip,” he said, and then 
his soul leaped into his throat. He called her. 
An owl hooted, and the river surged loudly. It 
seemed to him that he retrod the waxy bank a 


86 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


dozen times, groping and calling, before he stum- 
bled against something which lay at the foot of 
a small sapling. There was the feel of fur in his 
hands. He threw off the rugs in which she was 
wrapped, and caught Sylvia up. Her head fell limp 
as he lifted her, shaking her roughly in his fright. 

It seemed to Sylvia that she heard him with 
annoyance. There was the spatter of rain again 
in her face, and she was no longer comfortable, 
but only wet and scared, with the blackness of the 
night closing around her, and Bylands’s voice 
sharply entreating her. 

“ Oh,” she breathed, trying to stand, “ what 
is the matter ? I — ” 

“ Sylvia !” cried Bylands, in an agony of relief. 
“ Oh, dearest !” 


XI 

A SPECKLED hen was proudly leading a new 
brood out, and the little whiffs of downy yellow 
blew about the fine young grass of the pasture 
opposite the Lichens House, as airily inconse- 
quent as if no animating appetites directed them. 
It was just after noon. The sun was warm for 
early April, and Sylvia felt it comfortably on her 
bare head as she leaned over the fence, watching 
the speckled hen’s matronly bearing. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


87 


She was sensible of a recurrent memory which 
excited her ideas, and yet which left a strange 
tang in her moral palate. 

Bylands’s momentary abandon, his touch of her 
hand, and his fervent exclamation, these vivified 
Sylvia’s mind to a consciousness of poor triumph. 
But there was somewhat in the recollection of 
her mischances of the night before which breathed 
a feverish odor. As of a personal indignity, she 
was aware of having openly condescended to take 
Bylands’s fancy by storm. It had seemed as if 
she must prove to her3elf the existence of forces 
more intense than those expressed in a merely 
human accordance of curve and color. She had 
wished on this score to read the text of personal 
conviction, and on a sudden the book was open 
to her dazzled eyes. She admitted to herself a 
wish to see a little further into the fresh pages, 
but she was afraid to go on, and simply realized 
that there was nothing for it but to shut the vol- 
ume with her interest at a crisis. 

A wonder as to the best fashion of carriage 
towards Bylands when they should next meet was 
turning in her mind. She had almost decided to 
leave the embarrassing decision with him, when 
she saw him approaching. He came up behind 
her, his face working. 

“ Miss Bylands,” he said, rather humbly, “may 
I speak to you ?” 


88 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ He is going to apologize/^ thought Sylvia. 
“That is bad.” And turning a little, she said, 
“Oh yes.” Her eyes were down, and she felt 
singularly at peace with herself, calmed by his 
perturbation. “ Certainly, Mr. Bylands.” 

Delk had arranged with himself the matter of 
a speech commingling elements of excuse and 
entreaty; but the words left him rather unex- 
pectedly, and he stood looking towards Sylvia 
with a kind of dumb appeal in his dark face. 
He had come close enough to set an elbow on 
the fence, and suddenly he buried his face in his 
hands. Sylvia saw his cheek redden under the 
dwindling end of his mustache. He threw his 
head back, as if defying the emotion that was on 
him, his lips seeming to harden. For a moment 
he had the mastery, and then all at once it ap- 
peared to Sylvia as if his lips broadened and his 
eyelashes clung together. He wheeled away with 
a groan of shame. 

His tears were far more effectual with her than 
any eloquence could have been. She trembled to 
see them, but they conveyed to her a profound 
dattery. 

“ I am a fool !” he said, dashing at his eyes 
with a rapid hand. “ Oh, what shall I do, Sylvia ?” 

She regarded him with a tender compassion 
which wore the specious garb of an almost moth- 
erly sentiment. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


89 


I never spent such hours in my life,” he 
breathed. “ Sylvia, you don’t — you are not of- 
fended } Ah, I don’t mean that ; I mean — ” 

She was still observing him with her gentle air. 
“ Let us forget whatever has occurred,” she sug- 
gested. We are friends still, I hope.” 

“ ‘ Friends ?’ No. I—” 

“ Hush !” advised Sylvia. 

“ But I can’t ! This isn’t friendship which I 
have for you.” 

“ If you say any more I shall go.” 

He stared at her helplessly. She looked as 
firm in her fragility as a toy of white jade. Her 
lips were white too, except that at their joining a 
thread of color showed faintly. 

“ I may come to the house — as usual ?” he fal- 
tered. “You said we might be friends.” 

Sylvia let her eyes wander down the road. The 
view was dull and sordid. All the meannesses 
of the houses and straggling fences and abject 
sheds stood bold in the sunlight. Hogs were 
rooting about the freight-house platform, and un- 
kempt children sprawled here and there in an 
open doorway. 

It was a desperately dull outlook. As she 
turned from it, Bylands made a little gesture of 
pleading, his lips still uncertain in their slight 
covert of beard. 

“ Sylvia !” he said. 


90 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ Oh well !” said Sylvia, her hand sweeping 
outward as if she dismissed the matter lightly. 
“ Yes — come.” 


XII 

Bylands, in studying his position, felt like a 
man who, having eaten to the full of bread-and- 
milk, is bidden to a banquet, his eye mocked by 
the delicate viands. He felt sure that but for his 
relations with Rosetta Valley, he might have made 
no barren task of wooing the captain’s niece. 

Dispassionately examined under the lens of 
pure reason, the feeling he had had for the 
Kentucky girl seemed merely a sort of satisfac- 
tion at her open preference. He had thought of 
marrying because in his surroundings bache- 
lorhood had no special charm or privilege. Ro- 
setta’s vaunted beauty pleased his pride no less 
than his artistic perceptions. Other men plied 
her with devotions — one young fellow, the son of 
a rich land-owner in an adjoining county, nota- 
bly paying suit. 

Folk began to intimate that unless Bylands 
“made better time, old dasher’s son ’d beat 
him and Delk, spurred with a desire for the 
other man’s discomfiture, said, somewhat pettish- 
ly, to Rosetta: “I don’t want to meet that fellow 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


91 


Clasher here again. If he keeps on coming, I 
shall stop.” 

“ Shall I tell him ?” faltered Rosetta, her 
lovely eyes seeking his face — “ shall I tell 
him—” 

“Tell him you are going to marry me,” said 
Delk, feeling a benignant sense of gratification 
as Rosetta, too artless to conceal her happiness, 
whispered, “Oh, Delk!” 

Her love, on the whole, had afforded Bylands 
rather a tame pleasure. She gave too liberally. 
All her young soul called him master, and, be- 
coming used to her prostrations, Delk found them 
rather tiresome than otherwise. In a languid 
sort of way, however, he was fond of Rosetta, 
and had reconciled himself to some lack of flavor 
in her on the ground that her insipidity was the 
natural result of her sex. 

Woman to Bylands was less a fascinating enig- 
ma than a purely human creature of moderate 
rationality. He believed that in having domestic 
tastes and a mild temper she fulfilled her high- 
est possibility ; and even when he found Sylvia 
charming, it was because he considered that he 
detected in her the virtues by which he set store. 
It had soon become very plain to him that she 
affected him as no one else had ever affected 
him. She made him see himself in the image he 
liked to be known by, and when he left her, it 


92 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


was always with a rapt remembrance, not of her 
graciousness, but of his own brilliancy. 

Sylvia herself, from expecting little of him in 
way of intelligence, grew daily more surprised at 
the amount of knowledge which an impression- 
able man gets without exertion. It was true that 
he had only a desultory acquaintance with the 
literature of his age, the Cincinnati and county 
papers being his chief reading, with occasional 
light novels, which he admitted, had lost charm for 
him. Sylvia’s book-fraught phraseology passed 
with him for coin of fresh mintage, while his fa- 
miliarity with trees and stones and woodland 
creatures seemed to her the evidence of a pe- 
culiarly quick intellect. 

Sure of her footing, she studied with warm in- 
terest the contrarieties of Bylands’s character, 
which did not adjust itself to any one set of 
facts, but remained pliant to circumstance, and 
took ever new shape with the die of the hour. 
She gave him her pet authors to read, and his 
comments on these choice and master spirits had 
a singular freshness of criticism. He remarked 
of Browning that the poet seemed to strike it once 
in a v/hile. Tolstoi he reported himself as un- 
able to get the drift of. Swinburne he consid- 
ered “long-winded,” but liked notwithstanding 
this fault, because one could read him a long 
time without thinking of anything in particular. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


93 


“ I am tired,” said Sylvia to her uncle, “ of hav- 
ing to form the literary taste of every man I 
meet. I wonder if my effort isn’t typically that 
of the American woman ? She sits at home and 
reads, and when she comes upon the male of her 
race, who has been looking after his business 
matters, no talk except of the weather is possible. 
She can’t discuss percentage ; he knows little of 
letters ; but his incapacity is at least tempered 
with a willingness to be informed, and so she in- 
forms. He doesn’t gain her ground by losing 
his own, and she usually realizes this, after a 
time, with more or less disgust. Instead of na- 
tional realities she adopts alien ideals, and if a 
stocky Englishman or a deep-dyed Italian chances 
along — ” 

“The American ain’t in it,” concluded the 
captain. 

Despite his failure to run out of the mould 
just as she would have liked. Bylands continued 
to occupy Sylvia’s thoughts. 

They were much together, and presently drifted 
into the veiled emotional state when the senti- 
ments are an inevitable topic of discussion. They 
talked often of the vast number of unhappy mar- 
riages. 

“ It is because so few women have minds above 
small-beer,” said Sylvia. 


94 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Delk eagerly agreed with this, thinking of Ro- 
setta, but added, thinking of himself, that things 
would be different if more men could understand 
the exquisite delicacy of the womanly nature. 
He had learned this from Sylvia, but he believed 
it a part of his own observation, and uttered it 
with the emphasis of conviction. 

His attitude of worship became necessary to 
Sylvia. It was pleasant to sit like an idol in the 
gold shrine of a man’s adoration, knowing that 
one would take no hurt, however one’s worship- 
per beat his brows against the marble pedestal. 

She was not precisely aware how criticism lost 
footing as she and Bylands came upon a plane of 
mere feeling. The change was insensible to her, 
and Delk remained far more clearly aware of her 
conventional advantages than she was able to 
keep herself concerning his want of them. 

Going now and then to see Rosetta, Bylands 
hoped she would resent his coldness, and give 
him the opportunity of release he was ashamed 
to ask. He had tacitly decided to leave his en- 
tanglement to the adjusting agency of time ; but 
Rosetta’s heart was so completely involved that 
though his neglect was open, she held fast by the 
broken threads of their intercourse, and would not 
give over hoping. 

One day her aunt came to visit her, and took 
her to task. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


95 


“Look a-here, Rosetty,” she said, “that thar 
Delk Bylands ain’t actin’ square. I’d show him ! 
You don’t hev to put up with no sech crawfishin’. 
Look at you, a- spindlin’ and pinin’ till you’re 
mighty nigh scrawny ez a picked buzzard ! He 
jest wheedles round thet skite of a Bylands gyrl 
the hull ’jurin’ time. Your cousin Tom is fightin’ 
mad about it.” 

Rosetta wept. Her aunt, a weazen old woman, 
with colorless eyes and a mouth which seemed 
the hub of a hundred divergent wrinkles, drew the 
big helpless girl to her black cashmere bosom. 

“ Now you jest quit it, Rosetty !” she admon- 
ished. “ He’ll come around all right if you turn 
in p’intedly and riddle him well. He’s too sure 
of you. Show him two kin play fast and loose. 
Take up some other feller — thet ’ll fetch him ; he 
needs pokin’. You can’t tell how high a toad ’ll 
jump till you punch it.” 

“ Oh, Aunt Mag, I—” 

“Jest haul him over the coals, Rosetty.” 

“ I can’t,” sobbed Rosetta, with the hopeless 
abandonment of a woman to whom life, virtue, 
and God are encompassed in a single affection. 

“ I’ll bet I’d speak my mind to thet Bylands 
gyrl, then !” 

“’Tain’t her fault,” protested Rosetta. “She 
ain’t to blame. Mrs. Lichens says she speaks to 
him real sharp ; and once, when he was eating 


96 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


at the house, Sylvia says to him to quit talkin’ 
with his mouth full. She’s real short with Delk, 
Mrs. Lichens says.” 

“Thar’s more ways of killin’ a dog than to 
choke him on hot butter,” commented Mrs. Crew, 
grimly. 

“I’m going to read some,” cut in Rosetta, “ and 
get me a dress that drags a little smitch in the 
back.” She dried her eyes with the hem of her 
skirt. “ I’m better lookin’ than her — ” 

“ Well, I should remark !” 

“ And when he sees how differ’nt I’m going to 
be, he’ll be like he used to.” 

Mrs. Crew sniffed suspiciously. “You better 
quit failin’ off the way you hev lately,” she advised, 
with an anxious eye on Rosetta’s waning curves 
and accelerated color. 

Life in these June days was beating Rosetta 
with a harsh surf, but it flowed smoothly enough 
for Sylvia, who had aimlessly adjusted herself to 
a primitive environment, finding a certain half- 
pleasurable tranquillity in the irresponsible bear- 
ing of the hour. A sort of spiritual mediaevalism 
had darkened about her. It appeared impossi- 
ble to look towards ultimate issues. She hardly 
knew if she washed Delk free of his vows to Ro- 
setta. His love w'as very agreeable. It lifted 
the sunken surface of her days to a graceful ful- 
ness ; but she had now and then an inkling no- 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


97 


tion that only his fervency commended him, and 
that in its suspension there would be nothing to 
bridge over his insufficiency. 

She had an idea that when matters came to an 
actual crisis she would brace herself to a heroic 
pose, and, wearing a black gown, a cross at her 
throat, would give him back to his forsworn al- 
legiance. She would perhaps, in a broken voice, 
admit having loved him. Indeed, at the idea of 
giving him up she was sure of her regard, and 
the strength of her persuasion amazed and de- 
lighted her. 

She maintained her drifting policy, tacitly 
letting Bylands hope that once his affairs were 
settled, she would sit down with him under a 
green -wood tree, content to drink life’s waters 
out of a fresh leaf. 

One morning Delk came striding down the road, 
and glancing at Sylvia’s window, called her softly. 
She looked out. She had been brushing her hair, 
and her small pale face in the black masses was 
like a wedge of new moon in a separating cloud. 

“ Will you come down to the office a minute ?” 
he asked. 

When she appeared in the room below he 
began to apologize. “ I only wanted to see 
you for an instant,” he said. “The day felt 
empty. I felt like I used to feel before I knew 
you loved me.” 

7 


98 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Sylvia drew back, a look of anger in her eyes. 

“ I have offended you,” cried Bylands, bitterly. 
“ Sylvia, why is it that you resent it so if I speak 
of your caring for me ? You let me feel that my 
love for you is something to you. Surely — ” 

“ Don’t,” said Sylvia. “ Don’t go into the 
matter. Love is an airy bubble. Don’t touch it 
unless you want it to break.” 

“ Sylvia !” he exclaimed, in a kind of anguish, 
“ I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. A bubble ? 
It’s a good deal thicker and heavier than the 
earth is.” 

His hat was off, and he questioned her face with 
a sort of piteous helplessness which lent him an 
intimation of immortal youth, and made Sylvia 
feel old. 

His mournfulness, the beauty of his propor- 
tion, struck warmly on her heart. She was sen- 
sible of the romantic implication of the moment, 
of her own look of graceful calm as she folded 
her hands in the long sleeves of her white gown, 
sprinkled over with a conceit of purple this- 
tles. 

She told herself explicitly that this was the 
thing which poets rhyme, yet it came to her dimly 
that her pleasure in it was not simple enough to 
be called happiness. A strip of sunlit grass 
glimpsing through the open window aided her 
impressions, and she observed with a clear vi- 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


99 


sion a white cock haughtily pausing among some 
weeds across the road; his plumage airily stir- 
ring conveyed an idea of a great colorless flower 
couched on a low stalk, its texture changing in 
the sun. 

The man before her, his look accurately corre- 
sponding to her feeling for the picturesque, put 
the last touch on the scene. Her face softened, 
the large-pupilled eyes gently lessening in size. 

In the rear of the house was a clatter of tins 
mingled with threats and deprecations in the 
tones of Mrs. Lichens and Selesty. A bird hard 
by tried a thin, sweet note, which sounded as if he 
strained the August air slowly through shut bills. 

Delk, taking Sylvia’s hand, drew the arm about 
his neck, leaning his head upon it. She looked 
down at him with a sort of distant tenderness. 
She was goading imagination, watching her heart 
for thrills, reminding herself of men who had died 
for a touch of their mistresses’ lips. Her eyes 
dreamed. She leaned against his shoulder, her 
spirit floating from him in a world of visions. 
And then, on a sudden. Bylands saw a strange 
expression leap to her face. Her glance sprung 
wide, as with an alarming sight, and wheeling 
rapidly to follow that straining gaze, Bylands 
himself grew white and sat staring. The window 
framed a man’s face, gray and stern as it moved 
silently away — the face of old Bob Valley. 


lOO 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


XIII 

It was four o’clock of the afternoon, and the 
sun falling on a great pile of staves beyond the 
freight-house, made them look as if overlaid in 
gold-leaf. 

The hollow hill-side west of the town, bristling 
with trees, was beginning to warm with the fires 
of fall. Ruddy clumps of leafage bulged here and 
there from the green, and the coarse sward had a 
sallow tinge, as if the soil was washing through. 
There was a twittering of insects in the warm air, 
and the sky was lightly stippled with little clouds. 

Delk, standing in the door of the mill-office, 
his hat over his troubled brows, felt a curious irri- 
tation at the sharp clang of a hammer with which 
a man below the station was mending the switch. 

The engine was back from its daily trip to 
Clingsville, its stack still oozing thinly with smoke. 
A crowd of men were examining two red calves 
which a boy had driven to the drug-store steps. 
The little creatures stood quite still, their heads 
bent under a short yoke, their faces absolutely 
blank. From the lips of one a glassy thread 
hung motionless. 

“Thet thar least one’ll make a mighty fine 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


lOI 


plough-beast,” said a man in the road. “ What ’ll 
your pap take fer him, Josh ?” 

Delk turned away from the bargaining which 
followed, banging the door. He stumbled against 
a package of iron which had come in for the mill, 
and knocked the heavy thing clear across the 
room. Then he lighted a cigar, and resolutely 
set about posting his accounts. 

At a fumbling noise in the region of the door 
he glanced round, his expression of annoyance 
deepening as the man, stepping heavily over the 
threshold, revealed the figure of Rosetta Valley’s 
father. Bylands, flushing along the cheek-bones, 
got off the stool at once, and stood waiting, his 
back against the desk, as if he braced himself. 

The old man, his fine lips set strangely awry, 
pointed a shaking finger. “ You dog !” he said, 
hoarsely. 

Delk straightened himself, looking pale. His 
eyes flashed. “Look out,” he said — “look out 
what you say.” 

The other breathed so heavily his face was 
covering in purple spots. Drops of sweat shook 
on his forehead, and suddenly clinching his fist, 
he drew back, his figure seeming to shorten, as if 
the muscles knotted themselves for a mighty 
blow. For an instant he held off, as if he would 
have smitten the young man mortally. Bylands, in 
a SA^ift foresight, saw himself go down under that 


102 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


swelling arm. He stood still, his own arms hang- 
ing ; but when the old man let loose his hand, it 
was as if his strength had exhausted itself in the 
mere effort of preparation, and his blow, taking 
Bylands in the chest, fell feebly as a child’s stroke. 

It was Valley himself who reeled backward, 
dropping weakly on the bench along the wall. 

“I ’lowed to kill you dead,” he muttered — 
“breakin’ my girl’s heart — the sweetes’ thing 
God ever made. I — I’ve seen her broodin’ and 
failin’, but I never got the sense of what was 
doin’ — till — till — this mornin’, you hound, you !” 

“ Mr. Valley—” 

“Till I see you with the captain’s niece ; till my 
own eyes see what you was about.” 

“ Damnation !” muttered Delk, “ how have I 
got into this hole 

“You’ve made her believe black is white — 
thet girl of captain’s. Pore little soul ! — pore little 
soul ! — oh, Rosetty !” 

Delk had a spasm of resentment. 

“ I have felt for some time that perhaps I was 
not just the man to make Rosetta happy,” he 
began, trying to speak evenly. “ I have wanted 
to have a talk with her — ” 

The old man stumbled to his feet. “ Delk !” 
he breathed, “ I — don’t you — I’m sorry I strek 
you — I ain’t in my right mind. Look you, Delk ! I 
never laid off to bite the dust at no man’s feet ; but 


DELK STRAIGHTENED HIMSELF, LOOKING PALE 

















AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


103 


I — she’s all I got left, Rosetty is. Don’t you tell 
her thet — what you jest now said, about not bein’ 
fitted fer her — don’t you ! She’s ben lookin’ porely 
o’ late. I can’t see her go like her maw — ” Tears 
quivered over his eyeballs and choked his voice. 

Bylands, filled with pity and shame and un- 
certainty, turned his back on the old man’s strug- 
gle for composure. 

“Thet thar lick I give you — ” 

“ Oh, don’t speak of it,” said Delk, wearily. “ I 
shouldn’t have cared if you’d come in with a rifle 
and settled me. I don’t know what to tell you. 
I don’t know what to do.” 

Valley groped for the door-latch. He looked 
back, his breast heaving. “Thar’s one thing, 
Delk, she’s po’rful fond o’ you, Rosetty is. If 
you go back on her, you’ll be her death.” 

As he stepped out, he repeated in a mumbling 
undertone, his eyes down, “ She’s fond o’ you, 
Rosetty is.” 


XIV 

Selesty Miggins was in the press of biscuit- 
making. It was on for supper-time, and a floury 
trail led from the barrel in the pantry to the 
kitchen table, widening in a downy oval about 
Selesty’s feet. 


104 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


The dough was too thick, and she took up a 
bowl to get more buttermilk, crossing the room 
in a hopeless sort of gait, her elbows jerking aim- 
lessly, her body settling loosely on the hips at 
each step. As she walked she kept flinging back 
her stiff short hair. 

She gave a little start as Mrs. Lichens came 
bouncing into the kitchen, exclaiming at the 
spilled flour. 

“ God knows how I git on at all, with waste 
and dribble on all sides ! Ef you could git fellers 
out’n your head jurin’ bakin’-time, I’d thank my 
Maker.” 

“ I hain’t got no feller — ” 

“Don’t tell me/ What did you cut thet thar 
bang off fer — hunh ? When a gyrl gits notiony 
’bout the outside of her head, it’s cuz some man 
is on the eenside. Don’t put nare ’nother scrap 
o’ lard in thet pan ! I keep a hotel, Selesty. Ef 
folks wants home comferts, let ’em go whar home 
comferts is. Any one thet’s ben anywhar don’t 
expect nothin’ of a hotel.” She looked about 
excitedly. “ I like to fergot ez I came down fer 
hot-water. Fill the big tin, and take it up to 
Sylvia’s room, Selesty. The hot and cold water 
thet gyrl uses ain’t natcherl,” she added, solemn- 
ly. “ I’m ez clean a person ez any one goin’, 
and I hain’t used the water in my hull life thet 
gyrl does in a week. It’s a sin agin grace.” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON I05 

“ She worshes her hair,” put in Selesty. 

“ God help her ! She’ll ketch her livin’ death 
one o’ these days a-projectin’. Water,” added 
the landlady, with a pious face, “ hes never been 
nigh my hair. I hope I realize thet I’m fear- 
fully and wonderfully made. Ef the Lord hed 
wanted folks’s hair to be wetted. He’d of fur- 
nished their heads with springs. I hain’t nothin’ 
but Scripter to go by.” 

“ Miss Sylvia’s hair’s mighty soft and shiny,” 
said Selesty, faintly, as one who does not propose 
to weigh an opinion against Providence. 

“ Law, well it needs be !” sighed Mrs. Lichens, 
“ fer she ain’t none too pretty, though I will say 
she’s ez sof’-spoken a gyrl ez I wish to see. Thar’s 
times when them wheedlin’ ways o’ hern don’t 
ketch me jest right. I always ’spicion folks thet 
never give no person a sassy word. ’Tain’t natch- 
erl. I’m human myself,” ingenuously explained 
the landlady, “ and I know thet folks is born in 
sin. This is a evil generation, Selesty, and c’rupt. 
When you see them ez airCt evil and c’rupt, some- 
thin’s wrong with ’em. Fer me, X foller out 
the course laid down fer me. Ef my Maker 
hedn’t wanted me to be a sinner. He wouldn’t 
hev created me a sinner.” She paused for breath. 
“ Sylvia’s mighty sweet ; I ain’t chirpin’ a word 
agin her. ’Tain’t no wonder ez Delk Bylands hev 
got his head turned plumb around. I misdoubt 


io6 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


ef pore Rosetty Valley won’t git overlooked in 
the shuffle. But he’ll never git captain’s niece, 
Delk won’t. He better hang whar he’s got a grip, 
fer Sylvia ain’t studyin’ ’bout takin’ up with no- 
body in these parts, I tell yeh.” 

Captain Bylands, chancing to pass through the 
back hall-way, caught enough of these specula- 
tions to deepen his own furtive uneasiness as to 
Delk and his niece. He was beginning to feel 
that the young man came too often to the house. 
Obscure hints were stirring in the hamlet, and 
more than once of late the captain had corrected 
with violence some one’s opinion that his niece 
was “gittin’ ahead of Rosetty Valley.” 

It was a subject which the captain considered as 
demanding his attention, and finding Delk alone 
in the offlce on the morning after the young 
man’s interview with Rosetta’s father, he plunged 
into the matter. 

Delk had a brow of care, and sleeplessness 
reddened his eyes, but the captain, unaware of 
all except the business he had at heart, opened 
fire without preliminary tactics. 

“ Look here, Delk,” he said, “ I never bother 
folks unless they git to pilin’ lumber on my 
ground, and then I’m liable to ask ’em to move. 
Now things are this way : I know there’s nothing 
in it, but I can’t hev people’s tongues wagging 
about anything that touches Sylvia. I reckon 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON I07 

you better stay away from the hotel for a 
spell.” 

Delk, sore to the touch, responded to this with 
a leaping fire of indignation. “ Do you object to 
me seeing your niece ?” he asked, with an inso- 
lent eye on the captain. 

“ Shucks, no ! What’s the matter with you ? 
I jest look at it this way: You’re engaged to 
Rosetty. Well, folks naturally wonders to see you 
hanging round Sylvia. I’m not blaming you fer 
liking to pass the time with her *, she’s a good 
entertainer, Sylvia is.” He cleared his throat; 
adding, with a certain delicacy : “ I’ve watched 
you pretty close, Delk ; you don’t want to let 
your mind wander from home, m-m.? Sylvia’s 
ben mighty friendly with you. It’s her way with 
every one. She don’t mean nothing.” 

Delk had flushed hotly. 

“ How do you know what — ” 

The captain stopped him with a glance which 
had the swiftness and hardness of a bullet. “ Watch 
out !” he advised ; “ it’s my niece you’re speak- 
ing of.” 

“ I was only going to say — ” 

“That’s all right. I know men better than 
Sylvia does. She thinks they’re a nice, easy- 
going lot of things you can pat on the head and 
preach to and make angels of by pointing out 
what pretty things wings is. You and I know 


io8 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


differ’nt. We know that for a gyrl to fling a 
sweet word at a man is oftentimes like soaping 
a geyser. Nothing personal. I’m jest saying.” 

“Some men have a little common-sense,” angrily 
put in the other, “and few of them are all bad.” 

“ Still fewer are all good,” grimly contested the 
captain. “ Thar’s a mighty sameness in the whole 
lot. A flea wouldn’t know by the taste of the 
blood if he was biting a saint or a sinner.” He 
had a little feeling of compassion for Delk, whose 
face had let down in a kind of despairing scowl. 
“I hev’n’t a thing against you, Delk. I’ve got 
your good at heart. But things ain’t going to suit 
me. T’other night I overheard you and Sylvia 
discussing love, ’mongst other things. ’Twon’t do. 
Talking about love’s like waving a bottle of rye 
before a toper — something in us hankers at the 
looks of it.” 

He waited for Delk to express himself. The 
young man sat against the wall, his feet on a 
desk. He was casting in his mind for courage 
to tell the captain that Sylvia actually cared a 
great deal for him, and that his betrothal to 
Rosetta was a dead issue. 

“ I was talking to Bob Valley yesterday,” he 
began, “ and I told him I had come to the con- 
clusion that Rosetta and I — were not — just cal- 
culated to make each other happy.” 

Captain Bylands started. “ See here, Delk,” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 109 

he said, gravely, “ don’t you go to breaking the 
traces with any notion of — Sylvia.” 

Delk surveyed him with the calmness of a man 
whose hopes stand level with conviction. The 
captain’s eye blazed. 

“I’ve thought you a square man,” he cried, 
thumping his desk ; “ but if you’ve dared to whee- 
dle round Sylvia with your wedding-ring bought 
for another woman’s finger — ” 

“ I don’t know that I’ve wheedled round any- 
body,” demurred Delk. “ Can’t you see how it 
is, captain .? I’ve made a mistake about Rosetta. 
Yes, I have. And hadn’t I better find it out be- 
fore I marry her 

The captain had an air of growing trouble. 
“ It’s not for me to decide,” he said. “ All I 
insist on is this— don’t set your heart on Sylvia, 
because, as I see things, her sails ain’t set in your 
direction. Unly a day or two ago I — was speak- 
ing about you — sort of beating the bush, and she 
seemed to jedge you was a right likely young 
man, but she laughed right out when I worked it 
in that maybe you and her might hev fixed it up 
if circumstances hed ben differ’nt to what they 
was. She asked me if I wasn’t troubled about 
Henry Dye, too.” 

Delk, listening, felt as if something black was 
thickening before his eyes. His impression that 
Sylvia loved him was unchanged ; he believed 


no AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

that simply to preserve her own dignity she had 
made him a laughter and a derision. 

“ I got a plan on hand,” pursued the captain, 
“ that ’ll help you out. You want to git away 
from this place for a spell. Thar’s all that 
lumber up river; some one’s got to go and take an 
invoice of what’s afloat. Then I want new con- 
tracts with those parties in Chattanooga. It ’ll 
take a couple of months if you look up that cedar 
we want. You better stay away as long as the 
business ’ll let you. And I want it understood 
that no letters pass between you and my niece. 
I’m not going to hev anything laid on Sylvia.” 

Delk sat in thought. His heart beat with sullen 
anger against Sylvia. She would bitterly regret 
his going. He could teach her a lesson. She 
would know how to value him when he came 
back. After the manner of women, she would be 
ready to kiss the hand which had dealt her this 
rebuke. 

He thought, too, of Rosetta and her father, 
and the remembrance of them constrained his 
decision. That very night he would go and see 
Rosetta, and tell her he was going away, and ask 
her to forget him. • 

“Very well,” he said to the captain, “I am 
ready. Let’s look up those old contracts. And 
perhaps you had better get out your specifications 
for the cedar.” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


I 


XV 

Shame, sorrow, and dismay crept into Bylands’s 
bosom when, on going to visit Rosetta for the 
last time, he noted her altered looks. As he 
came in, a piteous sort of hopefulness flickered 
to her eyes, but it died away almost before he 
began to stammer out his ungracious story. It 
seemed to him that his cautious tacking only 
served to bring him continually around to the 
same statement, that he suspected they had been 
mistaken in thinking of a common life, and that 
perhaps she would prefer to let things be as they 
had been. He veiled this in all the paraphrase 
at his command, but it appeared as if the mean 
outlines stood the bolder for his attempts to cov- 
er them. It was an ugly fact which no trick of 
speech could beautify. It was simply, if she 
saw into it at all, a request for release. But 
though it had so hard and plain a face, Roset- 
ta did not seem wholly to catch at its import. 
Her dull brown eyes questioned Bylands with 
the stolid lethargy of despair. 

“ Thet there,” she faltered, her mind groping — 
“ say it again, Delk. I — want to be right sure I 
know what you mean.” 


II2 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Delk, feeling like a man who, having spat in 
another’s face, is humbly asked to repeat the in- 
sult, went over it all. 

Rosetta, sitting before him, gave ear with the 
same helpless air of half-stupid pain. She had 
dreaded this hour as a doomed man dreads the 
scaffold, counting his approach to it by the ham- 
mer-strokes outside his walls. Now that it was 
upon her, she had a sense of wonder that she did 
not die, that the sharpness in her throat still let 
the breath past. Her thinning cheeks were filled 
with a color which seemed to make the very air 
about them softly red. 

Bylands, anxiously observing her, noted the 
odd difference in texture of her thick glossless 
skin and smooth shining lips. With a slow gest- 
ure, full of pain, she laid one hand, the fingers 
apart and downward, upon her breast. 

“ I reckon I know now,” she said, in a cold 
voice, as of one who has got a mortal hurt ; “ I 
know by the way — it hurts — here — what you 
mean. Delk, don’t.” 

Her head hung, a look of sickness suffusing 
her face. Her fallen eyelids had a swollen heavi- 
ness, as if the balls bulged in an extremity of 
suffering. The pretty fair hair brushed her neck, 
its delicate color giving her forlorn young face 
so sad an air of childhood that tears struggled 
in Bylands’s voice as he spoke to her. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 1 13 

“ Rosetta,” he said, “ I didn’t think you’d take 
it like this. I won’t say another word about it 
I’ll leave it with you, Rosetta. You think it over, 
won’t you, while I’m away?” 

As he went from this loosening of the links 
between them, he was sensible of being m no 
humor for saying good-bye to the captain’s niece, 
and it was something of a relief to find the cap- 
tain himself in the hotel office. 

“You are going away?” Sylvia’s eyelashes 
crept up in wonder. 

“Yes,” replied Bylands, adding, indifferently, 
“ I suppose most of us like the idea of a change 
now and then.” 

Sylvia’s face expressed a resentful bewilder- 
ment, and Bylands, as he watched it take the 
mould of her spirit, was doubly aware of having 
given her a pang, and of being pleased with 
himself for doing it. He was sharply offended 
with her. For a moment, as her face dark- 
ened, he wished that he had never seen her 
— that he had been left to his mild regard for 
Rosetta, content in her wifely love, and in the 
children she would have given him. 

And then Sylvia’s hand, slipping coldly from 
his palm, gave his nerves the old half-anguished, 
half-rapturous vibration. At a touch she drew 
him again into ward, and he yielded, though some 
strength of manhood in him still wrought to 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


II4 

maintain his pride, and he managed to leave her 
with a semblance of indifference. 

Sylvia, in the dark as touching this action of 
his, which had the look of a caprice, cast in her 
mind, waking and sleeping, for some clew to its 
occasion. She believed he would write and ex- 
plain ; but as days passed on and brought no word 
from him, she began definitely to realize that he 
had only seemed a slave, and having wearied of 
her bonds had tossed them lightly by. 

A heavy gloom fell upon her, intermittent with 
restless hours, when she seemed to feel her brain 
surge round behind the hot eyes, curdling, mixing 
its atoms in a disorganizing mass. 

There were times in these hours of humiliation 
when she thought of God, and wondered if it 
would do any good to pray. She felt some little 
reluctance at the idea of crawling to His feet and 
asking Him to take the place this common one of 
His creatures had disdained. 

In one way or another she would bear the bur- 
den alone ; but the means by which she sought 
to bear it were such as suggested escape. She 
found reading wearisome. There was no pleas- 
ure in roaming about the hill-sides by herself, 
and she came finally to spend hours among her 
pillows ; the room darkened, dreaming waking 
dreams, which, like brightly-blooming parasites, 
dragged upon the real life and left it weak. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON II5 

She held long talks with Bylands, in which 
she arraigned him with royal scorn, or was very 
humble, and asked him simply to explain his ac- 
tion. Very often, meeting him in the hawthorn 
danes of fancy, she was merely gay, and ap- 
palled him with her heartlessness. She always 
came back, however, to the inexorable sense of 
disgust and humiliation she tried to shift — a 
state of mind exaggerated by the hard, colorless 
life about her, like a bunch of thorns in a block 
of ice. 

And as the weeks lengthened, and these con- 
tortions of wounded sentiment became less mark- 
ed, Sylvia wondered if she would not regret them. 
She feared the emptiness which had infested her 
spirit before she tried to drink nectar of the com- 
mon clay vessel which had broken at her lips. It 
seemed to her that a disordered blood is better 
than a blood which does not flow at all, and she 
watched her fever waning with a kind of com- 
passion for herself. 

During these enervating mental phases, if there 
was any difference in her outward look or bear- 
ing it was not marked enough for comment. 
Vague speculations as to Delk’s absence were 
aired, but Sylvia came in only as a very small 
pendant to the picture of Rosetta Valley. 

“ I wouldn’t be took back ef thet gyrl goes the 
way her mammy went,” surmised Mrs. Lichens 


Il6 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

one day in November, as she brought some 
towels into Sylvia’s room. 

It had been a cheerless week. The late skies 
were hooded in thick gray, and a livid streak 
like a wild white face, glimpsed above the dark 
western knob. In the room this cold light pick- 
ed out with startling clearness the lines of the 
mean furniture and the blankness of the cracked 
walls. 

Sylvia sat by the little stove, her feet crossed 
on the hearth, the satin strings of her slippers 
falling in the ashes. She turned with an idle in- 
terest. 

“ That girl ?” she questioned. 

“ Rosetty Valley,” explained Mrs. Lichens, 
staying herself by the bedpost. “ Old man Val- 
ley took the train this mornin’ fer Clingsville. 
Nothin’ would do him, so Mis’ Crew was tellin’ 
me, but he must fetch some big doctor from 
som’er’s up in the blue-grass — I disremember 
what town — to see Rosetty.” 

Sylvia’s eyes grew suddenly black. “ Is she 
sick?” she asked. “I had heard she wasn’t well 
— but sick — real sick — I — ” 

“ ’Sh !” commented Mrs. Lichens, interrupting. 
“ Hev we any right to look fer health in a world 
whar we’re told one generation passuf away and 
another comuf? Km we expect health, as Chris- 
tian people ? How is one generation goin’ to pass 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON II7 

away onless it gits sick and dies ? Rosetty looks 
to me right smart like her sister Annabel looked 
— same high color and barkin’ cough.” 

Sylvia, huddling in her chair, was biting at her 
finger-nails. 

“ I wouldn’t wish to be in Delk Bylands’s boots 
along about the day of jedgment,” pursued the 
landlady, cheerfully. “ He jest natchely and 
p’intedly broke her speret clean down a-pickin’ 
up and puttin’ out like he done.” And as she 
went out she said, “ I lay off to go and see Ro- 
setty one day this week. Like to go ’long? 
Wharever sickness is,” she interjected, “ thar I 
am also. I let them ez is onchosen bustle round 
and do the nursin’ and cookin’. Fer me, give me 
a cheer by the bed, whar I kin shet my eyes and 
breathe a silent pray’r, and taste a bit of jelly, er 
anything the neighbors fetches in.” 

Sylvia heard her tread dying in the hallway. 
Below, in the kitchen, Selesty was singing over 
two or three lines of an old song : 

‘ ‘ When the spring-time comes, gentle Annie, 

And the wild flowers are scattered o’er the plain.” 

Over and over she sang them, and some scrap 
of Sylvia’s mind took the words up, repeating them 
in every variety of accent, every arrangement of 
syllable, until she grew dazed. 


i8 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ I am losing what little mind I used to have/’ 
she thought. “I am feeling as if I was of 
weight in the scheme of things, as if the eter- 
nities recognized me. This is hallucination. I 
must have some fresh air.” 


XVI 

Bylands thought often of writing to Sylvia, 
and he was restrained by the captain’s commands 
less than by a notion that his silence would per- 
haps be weighty in proportion to its duration. 

Rosetta’s forlorn face haunted him also, and 
his compunction gave him a sort of exasperated 
pity for her, which, as his return to Chamouni 
drew near, reminded him that burs were in the 
wind for him if she still held to her fancy. 

Nevertheless, he wanted to be back. The knob 
ramparts of the village, the rushing green licks, 
the thick woods and stony sweeps of field, all so- 
licited him because Sylvia’s foot trod the rough 
ways, and Sylvia’s eyes at each even-tide caught 
the yellow of the setting sun, which turned the 
west hills nightly to jagged gold. 

Just about the time when he had arranged the 
various affairs intrusted to him, and was con- 
sidering the end of his exile, he had from the 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON II9 

captain a letter which caused him considerable 
annoyance. 

“ I would not wonder,” the captain wrote, “ if 
you were thinking of coming home in time for 
the holidays. Well, there is just this : I believe 
you had better look up those Tompkins Creek 
fellows that have been working timber off our 
survey in their county. I would not advise you 
to come home just now. I speak as a friend, for 
I believe there is some excuse for your doings, 
though there are those who do not agree with me. 
That is why I say keep away from these parts 
for a spell. Old man Valley is like he was de- 
ranged over Rosetta being so poorly. I reckon 
he feels that you have not treated her just right. 
Anyhow, folks here have a prejudice, and while 
Rosetta stays low as she is now, it would not be 
right pleasant for you to be round.” 

Sylvia was glad when the captain one day 
stated that Delk would be detained longer than 
he had thought. 

“ I wrote him that things wasn’t jest going his 
way,” admitted the captain. “ Good deal of feel- 
ing against him, and it ain’t well for a man to turn 
his back plumb against public opinion. If the 
current of a stream gets you behind the knee- 
joints it ’ll lay you out like a streak of light- 
ning. Always best, if you got to go against 
it, to go a little sideways. Give the water a 


120 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


thin edge to strike, and it won’t take you off your 
feet.” 

Sylvia felt that it would be very unpleasant to 
have Delk back. His image was growing misty 
for her, and almost the only sentiment she had 
regarding him was one of vivid irritation that he 
had been able to cause her even a trifling dis- 
comfort. With a sickish amusement she remem- 
bered how she had spun out her sensibilities, weav- 
ing a mantle of purple about a shape which had 
never been in any way kingly, except that she had 
bowed the knee to it, and decked it in the ermine 
of dreams, and set the sceptre of fancy in its 
hand, crowning it with the wild brightness of 
her fervid visions. 

Her observance of this figment of majesty had 
depended little on the object. The knee must 
bend though our gods be wood and stone. Even 
the little sense of mastery she had nourished seem- 
ed now the merest falsity. It had helped to accent 
Bylands’s mannish qualities, but Sylvia realized 
very squarely that he had been a mere puppet in 
her hands, his operations directed by her will. He 
had walked with head upborne because she taught 
him this bearing, and now that his fine brown eyes 
and tropic darkness of skin no longer wrought for 
him, Sylvia recalled her first idea of him as a man 
without vital strength of spirit. Even his senti- 
mentalities, though they gave him a certain- deli- 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


21 


cacy, had only served like a thin varnish to show 
up the quality of the stuff, its lack of pith and 
hard knots. The veiled dissatisfaction which he 
had always given her appeared to her now as a 
recognition of her own futile expenditure of force; 
she had gauged him with a finger, drawing away 
with the vacuous pang of one who has thought 
to plunge arm-deep. 

As these ideas struck in upon Sylvia’s mind 
she formulated a general notion of the littleness 
and transiency of the thing called love. 

She walked alone in the December wastes south 
of the village, and levelled a dull eye through 
the stark brown woodland spaces where fall had 
ravened, leaving behind it trees picked to the 
skeleton and heaps of broken leaves like mangled 
feathers. The sky was as blue as it had been in 
summer. To her right a group of slender persim- 
mon-trees leaned together, their webby branches 
caught with an occasional ball of pinkish gold, 
still holding fast in spite of frost, gem-like as the 
fruit of an Eastern fable. 

As the winter wore on Captain Bylands watch- 
ed Sylvia with solicitude. He knew her days 
must be monotonous, and casting about for some 
means of enlivening them, he came to a decision 
which he broached to her one day along in Jan- 
uary. 

It was very cold ; the dining-room window was 


122 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


latticed in bare twigs through which winter stared 
white-faced, like a beggar envious of the inner 
cheer. The stove sputtered with pine-sticks, and 
Sylvia, who had just pushed away from the table, 
stood warming her hands, gazing out, and observ- 
ing that one of the Hines girls was sprinkling 
sawdust over the glassy backstep of the white 
cottage. 

She cast the atoms abroad as if she was scat- 
tering grain, standing straight and solid, her body 
set spaciously, as if her feet took a wide hold of 
the door-sill. A black rooster, his satin tail feath- 
ers iridescent with green and purple, rushed head- 
long, with a notion of corn. Having tried the 
quality of the oak dust, he retired with an air of 
affronted dignity, his neck tremulous. 

Sylvia laughed. “ It’s a little hard,” she said, 
detailing the scene, “but it’s a common experi- 
ence. We plunge into life with enthusiastic be- 
lief, and when it grates woodenly in our teeth we 
have to carry off our sense of being ‘ done ’ with 
as much indifference as may be.” « 

“ Best way to do,” philosophized the captain. 
“ When I see a man drop down at the first lick 
trouble gives him, I feel like walking over him. 
Thar’s Bob Valley ! I was telling him yesterday : 
‘You ought to brace up,’ I says. ‘Trouble’s 
like this — the more you give down to it the heav- 
ier it gits,’ I says, speaking of Rosetty. ‘ God 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


123 


a’mighty, captain,’ says he, ‘you never hed an 
unly daughter dying onder your eyes !’ ” 

Sylvia turned upon him a face of question. 
She could scarcely grow paler, but her lips moved 
as if little magnetic threads thrilled across the 
corners. “ She is no better ?” she asked. 

“ Rosetty ? She’ll never be no better, pore 
little thing ! That color of hers was always too 
pretty to be right.” 

Sylvia came nearer, her eyes large. “ Her fa- 
ther must have known she was not likely to with- 
stand it long — this family foe. Her mother died 
of consumption — I don’t see — ” She paused with 
an excited gesture. Her uncle looked anxious. 

“ She hes too much heart for other folks’s 
troubles,” he thought, noting her strained glance. 
And then he said aloud : “ I’m studying about 
taking a little trip South, Sylvia. I took a piece 
of land in Louisiany for a debt, and I’ve never 
ben right sure the papers were all correct. I 
don’t seem to git much satisfaction out of the 
lawyer that handled the thing — man named De- 
losier — and I thought I’d run down to New Or- 
leans ’long about the ist of February. How’d 
you like to go ? Stay a couple of weeks, say ? 
I’m going to hev Litten run the office.” 


24 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


XVII 

Sylvia was a little glad to get away from Cha- 
mouni, but she did not realize any active delight 
in her journey until they came into long stretches 
of pine forest, and her traditions of the South 
took sudden form and color, signalled forth by 
so small a thing as the gray moss hanging from 
the trees. 

Jumbled ideas of planters in spotless linen 
habits, their black hair gleaming under broad 
hats ; of old mansions, pillared and mangolia- 
shaded ; of dark-eyed women fanned by turbaned 
slaves ; of chivalry and hot blood and victims 
of honor — these ranged in her mind, one brilliant 
tone above the other, like layers of colored liq- 
uors in a glass, confused by the slightest shake. 

She leaned against the car window, inspired to 
new interest in the tall firs, so dense that here 
and there, as the pale sky struck between distant 
boles, it took the eye with a semblance of grave- 
yard shafts, white and slender among the green. 
When they crossed the great lake her imagination 
seemed to move into a native clime. Everything 
welcomed it. Every shade of the moveless mirror 
of water meant to Sylvia something she felt it did 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


125 


not mean to the captain yawning over his paper 
opposite, or to the fat man in the next compart- 
ment, whom the side glass revealed in a game of 
solitaire, or to the elderly young woman who 
stood on the rear platform inquiring into the ex- 
act length of the bridge. 

The lake had a surface like silvery morocco 
leather, a sort of grain running obliquely to its 
rim, which was wrapped in a vague whiteness 
like a lowering of the pale sky or a lifting of the 
colorless water. Jet-black sails speared the dis- 
tance. Nearer by a canoe was speeding along 
like a grotesque human thing, patting the dim 
water with long black arms. 

The sage-green banks, growing with strange 
plants, appealed to Sylvia with an alien beauty, a 
little sad in their luxuriance, as if they remem- 
bered the lands where they were fathered long 
before the restless fingers of the tides tossed 
their seeds on these marshy slopes. 

The sight of a papery palmetto leaf, creased 
and sharply slit along the edge, gave Sylvia an 
odd sense of happiness. This was the South, the 
languorous land of sweet sounds and flower breath 
and warm color. It was the bright silk selvage 
of the monotonously unromantic weft of country 
which stretched grayly above it from ocean to 
ocean. 

For a day or two Sylvia and the captain wan- 


126 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


dered about the narrow streets of the French 
Quarter, Sylvia reading the guide-book, while her 
uncle, with his spectacles on, peered for house- 
numbers, or stood on the undrained curbs, smil- 
ing placidly at Sylvia’s interest in some small 
green-shuttered, white-stuccoed house in which a 
murder or political intrigue had been hatched, or 
about which a famed story had been written. 

Even the death notices posted on street-lamps 
were matters which engaged them, the black- 
edged placards seeming to cast a mysterious 
solemnity upon the balcony-hung thoroughfares. 
The foreign jargon of the black-eyed women 
in the market-places added to Sylvia’s concep- 
tions of remoteness. 

“ Fine figgers these here creole girls hev,” re- 
marked the captain ; “ but they wouldn’t be much 
of entertainers to me. I’m thankful I speak a 
language folks can onderstand.” 

“ But I don’t think these girls are creoles,” 
protested Sylvia. “ Oh no ! I am sure creoles 
do not go marketing for soup-greens.” 

“ Why not V' asked the captain. 

“ Oh,” laughed Sylvia, “ they are folk of exclu- 
sive pretensions, the creoles ! I don’t know ex- 
actly what they are like, but I fancy them as liv- 
ing in old houses with high walls to the garden, 
in which they walk of evenings. I’m sure they 
never market for soup-greens. They may occa- 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


127 


sionally be poor, but they do not mix with the 
herd ever.” 

One afternoon, the captain deciding to look 
into his law business, Sylvia determined to visit 
an old graveyard in the heart of the city. She 
went down the many stone steps of the hotel, 
through the great pillars to the thronged street 
below, in which boys were selling violets. The 
delicate sweetness of the flowers tempted her to 
buy a bunch, and as she walked on, the purple 
cluster in her hand added to her feeling of con- 
tent. She crushed the blossoms against her lips, 
and found their crisp silkiness of texture as de- 
licious as their smell, which strangely reminded 
her of honey. 

She found her way easily to the burying-ground, 
which made her think of a stone -yard as she 
came near the whitened walls above which square 
blocks of marble rose solidly, almost in a com- 
pact mass, unrelieved by a single spear of green. 

At the gate was a little lodge in which an old 
man sat. His eyes rested lifelessly on Sylvia as 
she glanced towards him in entering. He had an 
air of sleep, as if those whose slumber he watched 
had paid him with the faceless silver of oblivion. 

Close by the gate a low pyramid to the mem- 
ory of some long -dead Frenchman rose blunt. 
Beyond were other single tombs, and more which 
were like flat walls in which each sleeper had 


128 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


his bed in company. Between the stones were 
narrow shell- walks over which grass ran shyly, 
waxing bolder near the white tombs till its fresh- 
ness seemed one with the upward-reaching moss, 
thin as an emerald veil, which only half hid the 
accented letters. 

Sylvia sat down on an iron bench in a far 
corner of the place, hard by the austere tomb of 
the Jesuit priests, and fronting a massive block 
inscribed with a foreign name. Near it a pal- 
metto bent its stiff rounds, and in a basin at the 
tomb’s door some dark feathery plant of a tropic 
kind waved heavy plumes. A rose climbing at 
the side laid its pink cheek against the discolored 
stone. 

As Sylvia looked, a slim dark thing, with alert 
long tail and four flat feet — some sort of lizard — 
ran across the face of the tomb, its swift sinuous 
shape fleeting over the whiteness like a black line 
drawn upward with a rapid pencil. The names 
on the graves — Mathilde, Elise, Marie — held a 
gentle witchery. Leaning on the long arm of the 
bench, Sylvia closed her eyes to think of these 
women of a by -gone year and exotic ancestry, 
sleeping in their strait shelves all around her. 
The little arched doors of the tombs seemed to 
swing softly ajar, and within she saw long white 
linens and braided hair and folded small hands. 

“ Yet, if I could really see in,” she pondered. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


129 


“there would be only foulness and decay, a 
pinch of dust, a wisp of black hair, a shred of 
lawn, perhaps a jewelled ring. There is nothing 
in any of them now except the poor framework 
of humanity, a skull set in the ironic smile we all 
take on when the gentle mockery of the flesh slips 
away, and we realize the jest of mortal destiny.” 

The city surged to the very feet of these slum- 
berers, the cries of some children at play in the 
street mixing with the dovelike murmurs of the 
feathery plant near the tomb against which the 
rose leaned. Nothing reached them any more. 
They were as if they had not been, and in a flash 
it came over Sylvia that the little chances of life 
which had seemed so much to her were light as 
the dust which engenders them. That awful 
silence ingulfed the pretty clamor of existence 
as the ocean ingulfs pebbles. Love, whetting 
his blades in the heart of man, was no longer a 
consecrated priest, thinning his sacred steel for a 
sacrifice to heaven. He seemed now to Sylvia’s 
disillusioned eye merely a red -capped jester, 
banging an air-blown bladder against the cheeks 
of the dancers at a fair. 

“Miserable creatures,” she thought, “they must 
get what amusement they can from this hour of 
motion. Suppose they please themselves with the 
flare of torches and the fling of sugar ? It is wiser 
than to lift the face to an impenetrable sky.” 


9 


130 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Somehow the companionship of these dead 
folk had a curious charm of quietude. They did 
not tire one after the fashion of the living. Syl- 
via sat long by the side of the Jesuit priests. It 
grew late, and the sky reddened. She meant to 
go presently, but meantime she looked again at 
the terra-cotta vases tipping from the plaster 
walls, which in places were hung with a black- 
beaded gewgaw of remembrance. 

“They are all mon epoux^^ smiled Sylvia. 
“ I don’t see any ‘ to my wife.’ Women do all 
the world’s loving. They ought to be forgiven a 
good deal.” 

Men’s voices broke through the quiet. Some 
one was calling, and as Sylvia listened she heard 
her own name ring through the still spaces. With 
a little sense of strangeness and disbelief she 
leaned forward, the bunch of violets slipping from 
her lap. 

A step echoed on the shelly ground, and a 
young man suddenly rounding the grave-walled 
corner hard by, catching sight of Sylvia, started 
forward, and then, with an air of surprise, drew 
back. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


I3I 


XVIII 

“ She said she was coming here,” said the 
captain’s voice somewhere at hand, and as Sylvia 
caught the familiar modulations, the captain him- 
self appeared at the stranger’s shoulder, his brow 
exhibiting two distinct sets of anxious wrinkles. 
‘‘And the man at the gate — Hello ! why, there she 
is ! You’ve scared me out of a year’s growth, Syl- 
via!” He gave a great breath of relief, and added, 
“ Oh, I like to forgot ! Sylvia, this is Mr. Delosier, 
the lawyer I ben fighting back and forth with.” 

Sylvia glanced up at the younger man as her 
uncle went on to say that he had brought Mr. 
Delosier home to dinner, and that finding her 
still away, they had been somewhat alarmed. 

“ Night was coming on, and I didn’t know but 
you was lost, or locked up in some old church or 
buryin’- ground, or something,” concluded the 
captain. 

“ I have given you too much trouble,” said 
Sylvia, rising. 

Delosier murmured a word of denial, and she 
looked again at his acute face, in which a purely 
xA.merican shrewdness appeared to overlie a Gallic 
intensity. A certain exactness of detail about 


132 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


his features and attire struck Sylvia, as she noted 
the smoothness of his uncovered head, the cool- 
ness of his gray eyes, and the straight line of his 
small mustache. His name had an alien sound, 
but his keen glance and businesslike tone sug- 
gested the counting-house rather than an avenue 
of immemorial elms. 

“ I suppose he is the new South,” considered 
Sylvia, as he handed her the bunch of violets she 
had dropped. 

Delosier himself had not recovered from the 
start of surprise she had given him at the first 
sight. He had figured the captain’s niece as a 
fresh-faced girl with a thick braid hanging down 
her back, her blue eyes filling as she roamed 
about the streets unable to find her way, and per- 
haps afraid to ask about it. He had definitely 
settled with himself that she would wear a plaid 
shawl, and he had meant to be kind to her and 
console her with a box pf glad fruits on their 
way to the hotel. He liked Captain Bylands so 
much that he was prepared to be very friendly 
with the little niece also — this Sylvia of whom the 
captain talked continually. He gave the reality 
a side glance. Sylvia, her air that of a throneless 
queen, walked beside him with a sort of proud 
sadness, her white face and deep eyes seemingly 
unaware of him. He looked at her violets and 
the violet glint of the gown under her close coat. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


133 


He felt like one who strives to catch a far-olf 
strain of music, or whose senses are teased with" 
a faint breath of distant flowers. 

That night, on Delosier’s rather hurried ar- 
rangement, they all went to the French opera. 
It was a gala-night, the young man told them as 
they went up the stone stairs into a gay little in- 
terior, all white and gold, with numbers of tiers 
circling the walls. La in progress when 

they arrived, and a slim-ankled girl, with stream- 
ing black hair and a stormy face, was singing 
something which the captain for a time politely 
tried to understand. He finally gave over the 
effort, resigning himself to his chair with a re- 
laxed countenance, his thumbs judicially out- 
spread. Women in evening gowns sat in the 
small scarlet stalls and red velvet boxes. Be- 
tween the acts people chattered in French, and 
gentlemen of a Louis Napoleon style of physiog- 
nomy, who with pressed palms and soft bravas 
had applauded the stormy -faced girl, walked 
about, greeting their friends. 

“ I thought 1 knew a little French,” said Sylvia 
to Delosier, “but I don’t. I suppose you can 
understand what this young man beside me is 
saying to the girl in saffron ?” 

Delosier laughed. “ It sounds very natural to 
me,” he said ; and he added that he had spent 
most of his life in New Orleans. 


^34 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


He exchanged a bow with a man leaning against 
a stall balustrade in talk with a white-haired 
woman, beside whom sat a very dark girl, her pale 
bronze color exquisitely relieved in white laces. 

“ Do you know them ?” Sylvia asked ; and De- 
losier, saying that he knew them very well, men- 
tioned their names. 

“ Theirs is an old Louisiana family,” he said. 
“ The daughter. Miss Marie, is a noted beauty.” 

He related some little incident of his acquaint- 
ance with her, and Sylvia wondered if he was 
above a certain embarrassment that his friends 
should see him thus associated with a girl whose 
gown was of last year’s vogue, and an elderly man 
in country broadcloth. She gave him a sudden 
glance of startled surmise. 

Delosier chanced to be looking at her, and both 
withdrew their eyes with a determinate sense of 
strangeness. 

Delosier, the captain found, was said to be one 
of the busiest men in the city, but this circum- 
stance did not prevent the young lawyer from 
spending considerable time with Sylvia and her 
uncle. They took long drives in company, going 
once to visit the wharves. They boarded a long 
boat lading with cotton bales, and another time 
Delosier took them to the roof of the Cotton Ex- 
change itself, and while they stood viewing the 
city, Sylvia’s veil blew off, spreading in the air 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 1 35 

and settling slowly down towards the steeples far 
below. 

“Hereafter you will see me as I am/’ said 
Sylvia. “ The higher one mounts the less one 
cares for pretexts. Do you know, I think it must 
be very unpleasant to die and be sifted down to 
the little bits of truth which are hidden in the 
cheerful delusions which we heap around our- 
selves. That is what will happen in the day 
when all things are made known. Personally, it 
makes me quite uncomfortable to think my soul 
has got to be publicly shredded up.” 

But she laughed a little, notwithstanding. De- 
losier regarded her intently. The wind was blow- 
ing out her violet skirts, and gathering the folds 
in her hand, she held them against her waist. 
Her neck, defined by a nestling knot of shadowy 
hair, had an exaggerated fineness, the delicate 
cords like white silk threads. 

“There is the quality of steel in this slight- 
wristed creature,” he pondered. “ She would bend 
to a breath, but I cannot fancy her breaking.” 

“ Well,” he said, half seriously, “ I suspect that 
in our misery of enforced revelation we shall have 
the comfort of much company. Most of our 
hearts have cherished some little root which has 
crept about and weakened the whole moral ma- 
sonry.” 

“We’ve all got our weak spot,” agreed the 


136 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

captain. “ I’m a great favoryte myself on taking 
folks log -run, wind -shakes and w^orm- holes in 
along with the sound stuff. Mighty few men are 
first quality timber right through, but thar’s gen- 
erally pretty fair streaks here and again that ’ll 
pass ’em in the market with a shove.” 

“ I am reassured,” smiled Sylvia. “ It seems my 
pet upas-tree isn’t alone in its greenness.” 

“Yours !” said Delosier, rather quickly. And 
then he looked at his watch, as if to carry off a 
trifling sense of awkwardness. “ I think we are 
going to be a little late for dinner,” he added. 

Upon his invitation they were going to dine at 
a very small, very dingy cafe, in which Delosier 
had promised Sylvia that everything should be as 
French as she could wish. It was in a crooked 
side street, the glass door hung with a lace cur- 
tain which let the outer light sift in an airy pat- 
tern on the sanded floor. The tables were too 
high and the chairs too low, but Sylvia forgot 
these discomforts as the features of the place be- 
gan to impress themselves. 

“Ah, Gaston,” said Delosier, as a white-sacked 
waiter seated them. 

He talked rapidly to the man, his little gestures 
impressing his words as the slant accents marked 
the gilt letters of the sign over an opposite shop 
door. The waiter, solicitously bending, empha- 
sized the other man’s look of distinction. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


137 


The dishes which were served had oddly piq- 
uant flavors, calculated less to charm the palate 
with single effects, than to produce a final har- 
mony of taste. 

“ Till now,” said Sylvia, solemnly, “ I have 
never eaten.” 

There was a dessert which, as Gaston pre- 
sented it in a silver dish, flamed all over in pale 
purple. 

“ In compliment to you,” said Delosier, smiling 
at Sylvia, as Gaston, with a small tripod, prod- 
ded the quivering heap, letting in the flames. 

Sylvia tasted it with a visionary feeling. 
Through a rear door she had a view of a flagged 
court, through which excitable women in sabots 
and short blue skirts clattered. 

At her desk in the corner, madame the propri- 
etor smiled on the dining, a heavily built woman 
of forty, her plump arms threatening the tight 
sleeves of her gown. 

It seemed to Sylvia like a dream which has 
come true. She kept regarding things, vaguely 
wondering why they appeared distantly familiar, 
almost as if she had seen them all long ago. 
Delosier himself, watching her with a reflected 
pleasure, seemed as if modelled on the lines of 
some old idea. His gentle look of interest made 
her feel that he understood her happy abstrac- 
tion, and she smiled as she looked at him, not- 


38 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


ing his slight leaning figure and precisely parted 
hair. 

Captain Bylands was telling the tedious tale 
of a party of bushwhackers at whose death he 
had assisted. “They’d ben plundering round for 
several days, and we was mighty glad when we 
struck their trail that morning, ’bout a mile out 
from camp. That was jest as the shot I ben tell- 
ing you of came whizzing out of a thicket and 
took our lieutenant in the breast. I held him in 
the saddle till I see he was gone. Then I turned 
in with the rest, and we caught seventeen of them 
fellers, and we took our picket-ropes and knotted 
each man round the neck, and stood him under a 
tree, and yanked the rope, and away he went !” 

Sylvia wondered if Delosier’s look of attention 
was sincere. He was aware of the thoughtful 
side glances she had been furtively giving him. 

“ She distrusts me,” he conjectured, and he 
felt hurt. “ When she knows me better,” his 
mind pursued — “ when she knows me better — ” 
The thought suddenly changed. Would she ever 
know him any better, this girl who so strangely 
interested him, and who in another day would be 
far from his walks of life ? 

The morning Sylvia and her uncle left New 
Orleans, Delosier came to the station to see them 
off. As he took the hand Sylvia held out, he 
said. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


139 


“I am going to miss you very much. Will 
you let me write to you occasionally and tell you 
how New Orleans looks when you are not in it ? 
Captain Bylands, I am asking Miss Bylands if I 
may write to her. Won’t you persuade her ?” 

The captain thrust his arm abroad in a tremen- 
dous gesture of permission. “ She’ll be mighty 
proud,” he declared, heartily. 

“Yes,” said Sylvia, rather seriously, “I will.” 

“And when you make that trip to Cincinna- 
tah,” the captain cut in, “don’t forget you’ve 
promised to stop over and see what Chamouni 
looks like — hunh ?” 

“ Oh,” said Delosier, “ I am not likely to for- 
get. Don’t be surprised if you see me soon.” 

“Can’t make it too soon,” roared the captain, 
as the train began to move. 

From the platform the young man caught a 
last glimpse of Sylvia as the car rolled by, con- 
fusing the vision with a glitter of plate-glass and 
bits of mirror and the shimmer of plush hangings. 
She was in a corner of the long seat, her head 
against the dull silvery green of the brocade 
cushions. The quietude of her face was almost 
stern. She did not glance out at all, and De- 
losier was sensible of an odd heaviness of spirit. 


140 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


XIX 

A LETTER from Delk awaited Sylvia at Cha- 
mouni. He was getting desperate. He had been 
away nearly five months, and the captain’s ad- 
vices grew daily more ominous. Bylands began 
to fear that Sylvia’s regard for him, thus unnurt- 
ured, might take a shade of coldness. He de- 
cided to brave the captain’s authority by opening 
a correspondence with her. 

Sylvia gave the letter a swift glance. He ad- 
dressed her with the tenderness of certainty and 
a classic disregard of punctuation. He explained 
himself at length, and, declaring his abiding af- 
fection towards her, intimated rather too surely 
his idea that she returned it. 

The writing impressed Sylvia like some trifle 
which recalls a fever — its sick odors, benumbed 
pains, and half deliriums. It pointed the past 
like a gibe on a fool’s finger. The disgust which 
it gave her transferred itself to her thoughts of 
Bylands, and in proportion as she loathed herself 
for listening to him, she was aware of an active 
intolerance with him for having ventured to ap- 
proach her. 

She cut the letter into thin scraps, which curled 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


I41 

about her scissors as if they were alive and be- 
sought pity. 

“ I have had a letter from Delk,” she said to 
the captain. “ I wish you would tell him not to 
write again.” 

Her uncle exchanged a wink with himself. 
“Heh-heh!” he thought. “What did I tell 
you, captain ? Love ? Poppycock ! I knew he 
was ’way off if he jedged she cared anything 
about him. If she hed any notion for him it 
was unly a spurt — the kind of love that whitens 
an hour, breaks out like apple blows on a bough, 
and goes with the first wind. No, sir ! When 
the fruit hangs meller, you know the blooming 
was pretty, but not filling.” 

Whereupon he wTote to Delk, plainly repeat- 
ing Sylvia’s words, a bit of information which 
had an effect with the young man merely to sug- 
gest that Sylvia felt too uncomfortable at Roset- 
ta Valley’s condition to occupy herself with the 
man who had been Rosetta’s lover. 

Sylvia took up her old life as a prisoner re- 
sumes his chains, but she was heartened with 
her breath of outer air, and new speculations 
struck across her darkness like sun rays in a cell. 
When Delosier’s letter came, she waited half a 
day before opening it. The firm, square hand- 
writing pleased and provoked her. 

“ How commercial he is !” she thought, throw- 


142 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


ing the paper aside. “ I suspect I am hard to 
satisfy. When a man shows feeling, I think him 
weak; when he shows a lack of feeling, I think 
him stolid. Oh, well !” 

March was blustering over the hill-tops, flaunt- 
ing her hoiden skirts greenly on the slopes. 
The sky was like a slab of onyx, hard in its 
wreathing pinks and pale yellows. At the base 
of the south knob a stave-bucker sent up a rav- 
elled rag of steam, its heavy thud mixing with 
the scream of its upright saws. Sylvia could see 
men wheeling laden barrows from the stave piles 
to the bucker, the moving forms little and black, 
like ants laboring with big loads. 

Mrs. Lichens’s voice rose shrilly in the hall- 
way ; “ Aw, Selesty, whar you at 

A distant “ Whoo !” answered her. 

The sounds gave Sylvia an unreasonable an- 
noyance, and she shut her door sharply. 

The second week in March, Delosier stopped 
at Chamouni on his way north. If, in refined 
surroundings, Sylvia’s delicacy had been marked, 
in this rock-bound wilderness it seemed to him 
as exquisite as the fragile grace of a young fern 
which uncurls its pale fronds in the rough fork 
of a gnarled tree-root. 

Sylvia had a quiet pleasure in seeing the young 
man. He attracted her through a higher medium 
of feeling than that to which she had lately sur- 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


143 


rendered herself, and because he lured her fancy 
into no flowery byway, she perceived in herself 
only such signs of liking as may be involved in 
a tranquil friendship. 

On his way back to the South, Delosier stopped 
again for a day with his Kentucky friends, and 
this set Sylvia thinking. The tone of his letters 
after this changed perceptibly. When he visited 
the Lichens House again in April, the captain be- 
gan to mope. And when, early in May, Delosier 
dropped in on them equipped for a two weeks’ 
stay, every one gifted with ^ny speculative pow- 
ers whatever understood that the Louisianian 
came as a suitor to the captain’s niece. 

“And no girl could do better,” declared Mrs. 
Lichens, who had set up a great fancy for Delo- 
sier. “ I don’t say ez his good looks ’ll ever 
warp railroad iron, but he’s a Christian man, he 
is, and loves mince -pie. See the fine walk of 
him, Selesty! — like he had a bone in his back. 
Well, well, blessed is the man thet walkuf up- 
rightly and sittuf in the seat of the scornful.” 

The captain and Delosier were sitting in the 
office one night after supper. Sylvia had gone 
up- stairs for something, and Delosier was un- 
consciously listening for her footsteps. He pres- 
ently caught a massive tread in the hall-way, and 
was not surprised when Mrs. Lichens came in 
puffing, her gait as usual suggesting the presence 


144 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


in her frame of rubber sections which let her up 
and down like a foot-ball gently rebounding. 

“ Sylvia — Oh, she ain’t here 

“ She is coming,” said Delosier, surmising a 
light sound. 

“I was huntin’ you,” sighed the landlady, as 
Sylvia came in sight. “ Law, yes ! Bob Valley’s 
nigger man hev jest brought word thet they don’t 
look fer Rosetty to live skercely no time, and 
she’v’ took a notion ez she ’d like to see you. 
He’s waitin’ on the back porch, pore black crit- 
ter !” 

“ Tell him Sylvia ’ll be over first thing in the 
morning,” said Captain Bylands — “ hunh, Sylvia ? 
Pore little Rosetty!” He blew his nose vio- 
lently. 

Sylvia was leaning against the old bar, the 
finger-tips of one hand pressing her lips. Delo- 
sier fancied her trembling. 

“I will go to-night,” she said, very calmly. 
“ It isn’t far.” 

“ Mebby it ’d be better,” agreed the captain. 
“ Henry ’ll hitch up and drive you over. If my 
knee wasn’t so stiff — ” He paused, thinking of 
Bob Valley. 

But when Sylvia appeared with her cloak on, it 
was Delosier who waited at the side of the buggy. 

“ It’s a rough road,” hesitated Sylvia. “ I am 
not sure I know the way.” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


145 


“ I have asked about it,” said he, waiving these 
objections. 

It was quite light, for the moon was up, poised 
daintily on the dark summit of the hills, its 
height accurately measured by a tall oak. They 
crossed the Lick, and passing through Winklers, 
struck a road considerably like a section of 
ploughed field diversified with flat rocks. Here 
and there they jolted over a bowlder, in places 
where local industry had preferred a filling in 
with small stones to a removal of big ones. 

The Valleys lived a mile beyond Winklers. 
The house looked large and blank in the moon- 
light, and its red windows, striking dimly upon 
the white fields, seemed feverish and full of the 
heaviness of earth. 

Mrs. Crew opened the door. “ Set down,” she 
said to Delosier; “ I’ll fetch a candle. Miss By- 
lands, you jest come right up-steers. Rosetty’s 
lookin’ fer you.” 

Sylvia’s first feeling was one of relief as she 
entered the bedroom at the head of the stairs. 
Surely Rosetta could not be so far gone as they 
had said. She did not look ill at all, lying easily 
in the narrow pillows, her limbs straight under 
the red and green stars of the finely stitched 
quilt. Her wrists, indeed, were somewhat thin, 
but her face was lovelier than ever, spiritualized 
by those inner fires which wavered above her 


146 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


cheeks in silken flames, and deepened the dark- 
ness of her eyes to a potency which health had 
never lent them. 

Mrs. Crew had gone away, and Sylvia, draw- 
ing a chair close to the bed, cried out, in a little 
burst of hopefulness : “ How well you look, Ro- 
setta ! You are not very sick, are you ? I am so 
glad !” 

Rosetta held Sylvia’s hands tight, looking tran- 
quilly into her white, eager face. “ I don’t know,” 
she said. “ Sometimes I think I won’t never get 
about no more, and then again I think I ain’t, 
half so sick as they judge. I ben getting some 
stronger the last week. I reckon I’ll pick up now 
spring o’ the year is opening. But say — Sylvia ! 
If I shouldn’t — why, say ! — I want you to sing at 
my burying. You sung so sweet that night at 
Whitby’s. Won’t you 

She had spoken without any sign of effort, 
but as she paused, her voice was followed by 
a sound which stilled Sylvia’s heart. It was 
like the wind in a stark tree, or the clang of a 
chain, the iron links striking dully on one an- 
other. It had the awful accent of vacancy, the 
death-creep of breath wandering through wasted 
lungs. 

Rosetta herself did not seem to notice it. “ I’m 
mighty glad you came to-night,” she went on. 
“ I often wondered why you never ben.” And 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


147 


as Sylvia’s face hollowed as with a swift self- 
reproach, Rosetta added, gently, “ I didn’t know 
but you thought I cherished hard feelings against 
you on account of him.'' 

Sylvia, pressing her elbows on the pillow, bent 
nearer. “ Rosetta,” she breathed, “you — don’t 
hate me, then ?” 

Rosetta shook her head gravely, her long 
braids of yellow hair looping the bolster end. 
“No, I never. Aunt Mag and them let on you 
was as deep in the mud as he was in the mire; 
and at first I used to study over it thet maybe 
you tolled him on, jest being soft-spoken and 
all, and not caring if it hurt me or not. But 
since I ben laying here things looks mighty dif- 
fer’nt. Somehow, when you’ve ben sick a long 
spell, you feel real kind towards people ; and yet 
— I don’t know — special ones don’t seem as 
near.” She turned, with an air of weariness. 
“ Oh, say, won’t you tuck an end of the quilt 
under my back? The holler of it feels so 
tired !” 

Presently she touched Sylvia’s cheek with a 
little motherly gesture. 

“Nobody could help loving you,” she said. 
“ You’re the sweetes’ thing ! When you smooth 
my hair that way, my heart jest goes out to you 
as soft ! Don’t you,” she added, as Sylvia wept. 
“ Sh-h ! you wasn’t to blame. And Delk ” — she 


148 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

breathed again that long soughing breath — “ you 
kin make him happier than what. I could. You 
love him ” — she paused shyly — “ you love him as 
much as I did, don’t you ?” 

Sylvia felt the little tufted blocks of the quilt 
in her face. The tears on her cheek seemed to 
burn the cold flesh. She lifted her head. There 
was the candle, with its blue -rimmed cone of 
flame, casting an uncertain light over the dishes 
and labelled bottles on the stand hard by. A 
spoon, with some brown syrup settling stickily in 
its bowl; the long strips of rag-carpet; the pa- 
pered walls, the splint chairs and turned bed- 
posts — all appeared with an odd distinctness. 
Rosetta’s hot clasp and Rosetta’s fond glance 
seemed as if drawing Sylvia’s soul out. 

Her eyes turned slowly and helplessly upon 
Rosetta’s face, and in the intensity of that fixed 
gaze Rosetta started, lifting herself on her elbow, 
her expression one of sharp conjecture. 

“You don’t love Delk no more,” she said, in a 
strange voice, her finger pointing. “ You don’t 
— you — ” 

“No,” said Sylvia. She tried to add some- 
thing, but her tongue seemed to stiffen. 

Rosetta huddled forward, staring. And then 
her head fell slowly back in the dented pillows. 
She stretched out an open hand, as if she 
snatched at something which was leaving her — 


ROSETTA STARTED, LIFTING HERSELF ON HER ELHOW 


i 









AN EARTHLY PARAGON 149 

something of sudden worth which evaded her 
weak grasp. 

“O God!” she sighed, in a thin whisper; 
“ there was no need for me to die !” 


XX 

As they rode homeward in the moonlight Syl- 
via looked to Delosier unusually small and slight, 
a disordered lock dim upon her forehead, her 
brows like faint shadows. Her gaze was sad and 
distant, and he saw that she had been crying. 
It was clear to him that she had been under 
some stress of emotion from which she was not 
yet wholly recovered, and a kindly wish of ban- 
ishing these lingerings of sorrow impelled him 
presently to speak. 

“ What a night it is !” he said. “ Here be- 
yond the road-side is a wonderful effect of mist 
and moonshine. We must be at the Lick. Let 
us stop a moment.” And he added, “If you will 
hold the reins I should like to get out and see 
how things look from this ledge.” In a moment 
he came back, exclaiming. “ It is wonderful !” 
he said. “You must see it.” 

He took her out and helped her climb the 
rocky steps to the right. Below them, wide as a 


150 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

Stretch of sea, the river-fog rose high, reaching 
from bank to bank, a milky flow which melted to 
the form of an unreal shore. Everywhere the 
world was wrapped in this floating silver haze, 
the only distinct shape in sight that of the big 
white moon. 

Sylvia, staring into the breathing mist, seemed 
to drift away from the human companionship be- 
side her. Her hand dropped inertly from De- 
losier’s arm. The rapt melancholy of her face, 
pale and heavy as a storm-beaten flower, gave the 
young man a cold sense of isolation, as if her 
mood were lifting her to a level beyond him. 

“ Don’t leave me so far behind,” he said, sud- 
denly, in a voice so moved that Sylvia started, 
the expressional line of her face altering. “ Come 
back, Sylvia, come back, and make my common 
life as lovely as the moon makes this poor fog !” 

Sylvia, looking at him, shivered. 

In a breath he added, “ I don’t think I meant 
just yet to say you are everything to me, but the 
full heart takes its own will. Sylvia — you are 
not — oh, Sylvia ! are you turning ?” 

She had seemed as if stepping back, but at the 
sharpness of his tone she paused, still trembling, 
her eyes upon him, their glance wide. 

“ If — if you cannot love me to your soul’s 
depth,” he stammered, “ nothing is possible to me 
— no life, nothing. I wonder if you suspect how 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 151 

much I am yours ? My first glance of you was a 
revelation ; your first touch made me know I had 
never been alive till then. Why, Sylvia, I hadn’t 
even thought of love as a great force in life. I 
thought it was a moderately tender instinct which 
came to a man some time, and inclined him to 
mild domestic fancies. I don’t know what it is 
to men in general ; to me it isn’t mild, or mod- 
erate, or even tender. It is simply the one great 
question of mortal destiny. It seems to me that 
I could die and not be half so afraid of God as I 
am that you may not love me.” He broke off, 
half startled at the ring of his own voice. 

Sylvia, standing motionless, had a confused 
feeling that all the forces of life had risen in her, 
and were beating in great waves against the flesh. 

Delosier had lifted her hand, and it seemed as 
if his touch was a point towards which every fac- 
ulty of her being wheeled slowly. 

Rosetta, her arm out-stretched ; Bylands, with 
his assured face — whatever had bound her to 
these lives shrunk away like a thread which snaps 
at a single blow. The thing she had wooed for 
love and wearied of, finding it dust, was as a 
thing forgotten. The real love had come upon 
her like an army which has been in hiding, only 
half suspected, behind the hills, but rising in a 
sudden majesty. 

Sylvia !” 


52 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Sylvia’s head seemed to sink forward a little. 
She drew a short, half-gasping breath, and then 
a sharp pang of joy wrenched Delosier’s breast, 
for she had laid her cheek against his hand. 

As they rode slowly through the ford, Sylvia 
said, suddenly, “ It is so strange that you should 
care for me ! You who have been everywhere, who 
must have known so many — ” 

She could not go on, but Delosier, catching at 
her conjectures, reassured her. 

“ There is only one thing in my life which has 
anything like the complexion of a romance,” he 
insisted. “ Do you remember seeing at the French 
Opera-house a very dark girl in one of the boxes, 
Miss Marie — ” 

“Yes,” interrupted Sylvia — “yes.” 

“ Seven years ago I met her, and for a little 
while I had an idea that perhaps I was beginning 
to have rather a warm regard for her. It seems 
odd now. But I was young then. And presently 
I found out that the sentiment didn’t amount to 
much ; we kept on being good friends. She never 
knew I had been setting up a fancy for her.” 

“ How do you know ?” 

“ I never let her suspect it.” 

“ Why?” 

“ ‘ Why ?’ — dearest, you know why. Because 
I think the man who juggles with a woman’s feel- 
ings is less than a — well, I won’t use that word, 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


53 


after all. To my mind, the only thing viler than 
he — as fallen angels are lower than fallen mortals 
— is the woman who tosses up a man’s heart for 
her amusement, and lets it fall in the mud. For- 
give me for mentioning such matters, Sylvia.” 

As they drew up at the Lichens House and he 
lifted her down, he saw that she was shaking as 
if with cold, and anxiously remarking this, he 
said : 

‘‘ Go in, Sylvia. I should like to stand out here 
forever, but you must go in out of the night air.” 

Sylvia stole a little nearer. “ I want to — to tell 
you something,” she said, with an effort, pausing 
as he drew her towards him. “ But not now,” 
she added, clearly — “ not now.” 

When Delosier told Captain Bylands how mat- 
ters were with him and Sylvia, the captain, after 
a space, in which he violently dabbed at his face 
with a doubled handkerchief, turned and grasped 
the young man’s hand. 

“ If it’s got to be some one, I’d rather it was 
you, George, than any one else. I — it’s going to 
be a — pretty hard on me, though ! You’ll hev to 
give me time to git used to the idea — a couple 
of years, say.” 

“Oh!” expostulated Delosier; “if you had said 
a couple of months — ” 

Captain Bylands expressed a limitless negation. 
“ ’Tisn’t unly me,” he said, explaining away a 


154 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


possible notion of selfishness. “ It’s several things. 
You can’t rush these things through lickety-switch, 
George ; they take time. Clothes now ! — a girl 
hes lots of such fixings to see after. And thar 
ain’t a living dress-maker in Chamouni ! She’ll 
hev to go clear to the city for her riggings, Sylvia 
will. It ’ll take time.” 

“It .won’t take two years,” debated Delosier, 
and then, with a wily instinct, he added, “ you 
know, captain, this is rather a trying life for Syl- 
via. You and I don’t realize just what it is to 
her. I don’t think she looks as well as usual. I 
had hoped you would let me take her to the 
Northern lakes this summer. Don’t say you 
won’t ! Think it over, captain.” 

Sylvia, from her window, saw the two men go- 
ing down the road, now together and now sep- 
arating to avoid the mud. It was a day of ex- 
ceeding clearness, gentle with skies of mild blue, 
fresh with the intangible green of budding trees. 
Blooming fruit branches here and there swam 
like rosy vapors through thickets of leaf. A cow 
at the road-side was wrenching off a wisp of grass 
with her purple tongue, and the smell of the rent 
blades came to Sylvia like the very breath of 
spring. She could still hear Delosier’s voice les- 
sening in the distance, and as she shut her eyes 
to harbor its farthest accent, a strange mixture of 
feelings crept through her. That which stood clear- 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


55 


est was a large sense of calm. The peace which 
was with her seemed to have wiped out the year’s 
blurred text, leaving the page clean for the writing 
of a happier tale. And yet, after all, not wholly 
clean. Misting shadows of what had been there 
still haunted her vision, forcing her unwilling 
mind to remember what the characters had once 
meant. 

“ It’s a pity,” thought Sylvia — it’s a great pity 
that there must always be a bitter little pit in our 
golden fruit. Oh, well ! I am going to be as happy 
as I can be.” 

But it seemed rather as if her first hours of 
content were not to pass under a cloudless sky. 
Two days after, Mrs. Lichens, billowing up-stairs, 
delivered a pulpy knock at Sylvia’s door, and 
looked in. Sylvia, sitting on the edge of the bed 
buckling a slipper, her dressing-gown sleeves 
hanging over her hands in long ruffles, glanced 
up. 

“ Oh, Mrs. Lichens !” she said. “ Come in.” 

“ Ah,” groaned Mrs. Lichens, “ some of us 
comes in and some of us goes out, and the silver 
bowl is loosened and one is taken and another 
gits left, and seven women lay holt of one man, 
saying ‘ Rabbit ! Rabbit ! which, being interpret- 
ed, is Master.’ ” She sunk loosely into a chair, 
her chin quivering with excitement. 

“ Is anything wrong ?” asked Sylvia, putting on 


156 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


the Other slipper, and thinking perhaps a hog had 
made away with another of Mrs. Lichens’s geese 
overnight. 

“ Wrong !” burst out the landlady. And then, 
to Sylvia’s surprise, she began to gasp suspi- 
ciously, her obliterated waist -line shaking. “I 
jest got the news this minute,” she wept, “ and 
knowin’ how you’d feel about it, I ’lowed I’d bet- 
ter run up and tell you — what — hes happened.” 


XXI 

Sylvia looked at Mrs. Lichens’s quivering 
shape with a thrill of alarm. 

“ Try to tell me,” she said. 

“ It’s Rosetty !” sobbed the landlady, “ she’s 
gone. And I mind when she was three year old 
and hed croup, and I roasted ingins to lay onto 
her chest in a split wool stocking. Pore little 
Rosetty !” 

Sylvia had a cold sense of rigidity. Rosetta 
was dead. The long-drawn crow of a distant 
cock sounded like the wail of an old man over a 
coffin-lid. 

The road lay white in the sun. A team was 
going slowly past, and Sylvia got a hideous idea 
of a black spider crawling up a bare arm. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


157 


“ Old man Valley hevn’t shed a tear,” sobbed 
Mrs. Lichens. “ He jest sets by, a-smoofin’ her 
hair. She went last night at a quarter to two — 
died like a little lamb. Said good-bye to ’em all. 
Sent me her love, and left word you was to re- 
member you promised to sing. Oh, dear, dear, to 
think of her being buried ! But she’s gone whar 
thar’s no more tears,” declared the landlady, re- 
covering herself. “ And thar’s some thet won’t 
git to the same place, but shall hev their part 
with the quick and the dead. The very lastes’ 
word she ever said was his name — jest looked up 
and says she — I got it from old lady Wetmore — 
says she, a-goin’ on like she saw something, ‘ Why, 
it’s heaven ! Oh, Delk,’ says she, jest like thet ; 
‘ oh, Delk !’ ” Mrs. Lichens shook her head. “ It 
don’t look jest right — her a-seein’ Delk Bylands 
instead o’ the Lamb.” 

“What do you know about it?” said Sylvia, 
very white, and speaking passionately. “ She 
loved what she could see and hear and feel. She 
was human, and she obeyed the only voice she 
could understand. What did she know of souls 
and hereafters ? What do any of us know ? Bah ! 
She saw good in what was merely mean. She 
was blinded with the glory of eyes of stone. She 
found heaven in lips of clay. You don’t know 
what God is. Neither do I. She knew.” 

Mrs. Lichens, going thoughtfully down -stairs, 


158 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


communed with her dazed mind in an accent of 
wonder. “ God save us !” she muttered, “ she let 
loose on me like I’d done somethin’. She’s al- 
ways spoke mighty sweet of Rosetty, and I knowed 
she’d feel mighty bad, but I never sensed she’d 
take it like she did. She looked like she was go- 
ing to churn right in and hev a cry. Ef she hed 
I’d of ben right with her. I’m too tender-hearted 
to live skercely. Aw, Selesty! what’s thet soap 
doin’ in the dish-water a-meltin’ to nothin’, you 
triflin’ hussy you ? A dose of hickory tea ’d help 
you.” 

By way of settling her nerves she took a gulp 
from a goblet on the mantel-shelf, and having 
drawn from her pocket a box of snuff and a little 
twig, she sat down. Hearing a step, she slipped 
these things into her bosom. 

Henry Dye came in. “ Mighty pity ’bout Ro- 
setta goin’, ain’t it ?” he remarked, glancing down 
over his new trousers, striped in potato-bug hues. 

‘“I would not live always,’ ” said Mrs. Lichens. 

“ Well, neither would I ; but give me a few 
lines of it before I’m called on to loose my grip,” 
debated the young man. 

“You’ll git enough of it,” premised the land- 
lady. “Wait till you’re married and bereft, Henery 
Dye, and you’ll know what it is to say in the 
morning, ‘ Would God it were here.’ ” 

She noticed his eye on the goblet. He was 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


159 


not bad-looking in his green plaid necktie, his 
red hair like a veneer of polished cherry-wood. 

“ Hev a sup,” said Mrs. Lichens. 

She smiled indulgently, and Henry Dye remem- 
bered a farm she owned in Bracken County. 

“ I never touch whiskey except when I’m sick,’^ 
he demurred, “ but I gen’ally git sick whenever I 
see it.” He took down the goblet. “ Well, here’s 
to yeh.” 

“ Hev a cheer,” said Mrs. Lichens. “ I hev 
passed thoo Red Seas, so I hev, and all his Pha- 
ryohs hev gone over me. I need to set and rest, 
so I do, what with all my worries.” She sighed. 

Henry hitched a little nearer. 

“Thet Selesty Miggins runs me deranged,” 
murmured Mrs. Lichens, gently opening her eyes. 
“ The man thet gits her will need a long purse.” 
She shook her head, pursing her lips in an appe- 
tizing red bunch. “ I hope she’ll do well when 
she marries,” she pursued, “ though, God knows, 
a sloven woman is like a pleg of grasshoppers 
and locuses, ez we are told in first Luke, seven- 
teen nineteenth conclusuv. I’ll give Selesty a 
dozen fine towels when she marries.” And then 
she added, “ In case you think of — ” 

“ Who ? — me !” protested young Dye ; “ not 
any ! I ain’t a-marryin’ no young fool of a girl 
this year. When I marry ” — he cocked his eye 
at the ceiling, as if he saw a rose-wreathed band 


i6o 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


of cupids descending on his nuptials — “ it’s got 
to be some one I kin look up to — some one thet 
kin keep me straight. Thet’s my style.” 

Mrs. Lichens’s head went a little aside, and a 
very bright color rose high in her plump cheeks. 
Henry Dye, emboldened, dived forward and set 
a determined kiss under one demure ear. Then 
he drew back, rather scared. 

“ Say !” he stammered, “ I never went to do 
that.” 

“ ‘ Greet one another with a holy kiss,’ ” said 
Mrs. Lichens, severely. “You no call to ast 
nobody’s pardon, Henery. What are we, to set 
ourse’ves agin Scripter ?” 


XXII 

The house where Rosetta Valley had lived 
seemed to stand in the midst of a green field, 
fenced in from other green fields which paled 
away to the far-off hills floating against the sky 
like scarfs of blue crape. It was an old house 
of two stories, built of smoothed logs, between 
which the chinking was here and there loose, 
often fallen out altogether, leaving shelf-like rifts 
in which birds might nest, or house-snakes stretch 
their harmless shapes. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON l6l 

A long lean-to sloped from the back. In front 
the living-room was accessible by a block of 
limestone and a square porch, its floor rounded 
off at the edges with the stubbing of many feet, 
its posts sharp with the mark of the axe. Locust- 
trees were blooming, and the air was thick with 
the heavy breath of the gray -specked white 
plumes. 

The outer yard in which the barn stood was 
full of country wagons. Saddle-horses were tied 
along the fence, and groups of men and boys 
stood about in the grass, talking in subdued 
voices. 

There was room in the house only for the wom- 
en who had come to Rosetta’s burying, and Syl- 
via, leaving Delosier and the captain at the door, 
stepped in alone. She had a sense passably like 
relief as she glanced round. The coffin was not 
in sight. Mrs. Crew, gray - haired, with hollow 
cheeks, sat weeping by an inner door. Neighbor 
women, their stayless forms soberly garbed, were 
ranged stiffly about the walls. Numbers of girls 
with gay flowers in their hats hung about, look- 
ing awed and curious and a little tearful. One, 
who had just lighted off her horse, was pausing 
on the threshold to take off her long muslin 
riding-skirt. 

The room was deadly with flower smells. It 
was a low room, the board walls covered with a 


i 62 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


yellowish paper, the ceiling pasted over with 
white cotton. Around the walls the pictures 
were shrouded in black stuff, all except one, a 
photograph of Rosetta herself, over the corner 
of which was draped a length of white merino. 
Sylvia could see the picture only dimly, but it 
haunted her perceptions, a mere blackish spot 
in its gilded mat and walnut frame. It seemed 
somehow to be gazing at her like a mournful eye 
dimmed with tears. 

Sylvia crossed the room, and made as if to take 
one of two unoccupied chairs standing a little 
apart in the middle of the floor, but a large- 
waisted woman with thin arms came hurriedly 
forward, giving her a glance of intelligence. 

“ Not there,” she whispered. “ Sit here. Miss 
Bylands.” 

And as Sylvia sat down in the place indicated, 
wondering why the other chairs had been pro- 
hibited, there was a little rustle of movement in 
a room beyond. Two young men appeared in 
the doorway, the gleaming end of a coffin be- 
tween them. They came forward and set their 
burden on the two separated seats, and Sylvia, 
hedged in with the crowd, found herself sitting 
at Rosetta’s feet, facing the hard, gray counte- 
nance of Rosetta’s father. 

Rosetta seemed to lie very low in the shining 
wood box, its white padding rising high above 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


163 


her straight, slight figure, the hands crossed, the 
merino gown lying in two sharp folds, as if mod- 
elled in marble, from her breast to her feet. Her 
head lay a little back, the chin cleanly defined. 
It hardly depressed the cushion, its yellow hair 
strangely dull and smooth. There were locust 
blossoms below her hollow throat, their whiteness 
making her face look of a pale waxen yellow. 

Sylvia looked at the long white shape. This 
was not Rosetta as she remembered her by the 
living portrait which a first impression fixes in- 
delibly in the mind; this was not the girl she 
had seen standing in the door, the breeze blow- 
ing her hair over her flushed cheek till the fancy 
was stirred to some thought of sea-weed wrapping 
in the ebb of the tide about a rainbow shell. 
There was not even a human suggestiveness in 
the coffined thing before her. The fallen face 
looked light and empty, as if it had no union 
with the body. It was like a mask worn for a 
day’s adventuring, and thrown aside at nightfall, 
battered and spoiled. 

The preacher had come and the rooms were 
packed. He was a man of priestly aspect, his 
face tanned with mountain riding. He stood at 
the coffin-side, one hand in his small Bible, his 
eyes set on the distant hills. 

Sylvia hardly knew for a little space what he 
was saying, but she presently grew aware that he 


I 64 an earthly paragon 

was speaking of the resignation with which we see 
the old die, gathered in their ripeness. 

“ It is not thus with us,” he went on, in a slow, 
gentle utterance, “when the young are taken from 
us in the blossom of their years. We are apt to 
cavil at a Providence as strange as that which has 
taken Rosetta from us, forgetting to be thankful 
that so much beauty and faith and goodness 
dwelt with us for a little while.” 

Outside the open windows, to the left, groups 
of men stood listening. Something back of them, 
leaning against a tree, Delosier stood, just where 
Sylvia could see him whenever her eyes were able 
to leave Rosetta. She wondered why they had 
laced the girl’s fingers so unnaturally. 

“ When I die,” she thought, “ when I die — ” 
but, after all, what matter of consideration was 
it if one looked well or ill in one’s grave ? 

A white dog crept between the feet of the 
people and stretched himself under the coffin. 
Some one tried quietly to thrust him out; but 
Bob Valley lifted a forbidding face, and Sylvia 
guessed that the dog had been Rosetta’s. He 
lay with his nose between his paws. Some flies 
buzzed through the room, and the large -waist- 
ed woman shook a handkerchief over Rosetta’s 
head. 

Sylvia began to wonder how long it would last, 
and if the curious rigor of her limbs would carry 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 165 

her to the end. Suddenly she thought of By- 
lands, and the idea of him seemed to bear part 
with these signs of death. What was he made 
of, to have thrown away so much love? “Just 
to have what Rosetta gave him,” thought Sylvia, 
“ I would serve like a slave. I would forgive any- 
thing and all things.” She sought out Delosier’s 
figure, and the scene about her melted away as 
some words of his leaped to her mind — hard, glit- 
tering, like an upward flash of battle-axes — the 
words he had said that night as they came through 
the ford. 

The preacher had been praying. He had said 
Amen, and long and deep the syllables were 
echoed by the men’s voices. There was a mo- 
ment of silence. They were waiting for Sylvia to 
sing the old hymn which had been chosen, the 
last music that was to roll, however silently, on 
Rosetta’s ears, before the darkness closed upon 
her, and she lay where there are no sounds save 
the silken creep of worms and the crumbling of 
dust, and perhaps the bursting of seeds that strug- 
gle up to grasp the sunlight with feeble fingers. 

Sylvia had no consciousness of volition. She 
was singing, indeed, but she did not know how 
or why. It seemed to her, as she went on, that the 
words did not please Rosetta. The coffin, frailly 
upborne on the splint chairs, trembled and shivered 
as if the wood which had leaped with sap and 


i66 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


grown green in the fresh air was troubled to 
think of everlasting night ; as if the coldness it 
held chilled it through. The varnished, sides, 
reflecting the little movements of the people 
about, appeared as if changing to spiritual condi- 
tions of their own. 

A child who was fretful seemed to fill the room 
with its clamor. Delosier’s face was broadening 
into a great colorless blur. The ceiling bulged 
downward and the walls reached in as if to crush 
out the slender white thing between them. Peo- 
ple were gathering in the place. They were all 
standing unsteadily, lifting on tiptoe, their thick- 
ening faces leering at Sylvia, one crowding an- 
other. 

She kept on singing. She no longer realized 
what words were on her lips for wondering what 
it would be like to touch Rosetta, to pitch weakly 
forward into the narrow white space where Ro- 
setta lay. Surely she was not singing right ! What 
was that last line — that — She gazed viewlessly 
about. Some one with a quick, authoritative move- 
ment, had pressed through the throng, and then, 
whether the song was done or not, the people 
were standing back to let her pass, and she was 
out-doors, where the sun shone and everything 
was alive. She felt well again ; it was so good 
to see the sky. Delosier brought a chair, and she 
sat down in the thin shade of the locust-trees. 


SHE WAS SINGING, INDEED, BUT SHE DID NOT KNOW HOW OR WHY 








'*^4 

vV.Ti- 

.^v 

1 i 










AN EARTHLY PARAGON 167 

“You begin to look a little like yourself,” said 
Delosier, but there was a noise on the porch, and 
Sylvia barely heard him. She was watching the 
double row of men who were bearing over the 
short green grass the wide-shouldered box which 
seemed to throw so strange a shadow upon the 
morning. Two or three horses pranced with fear 
as it passed them. A spring- wagon stood at the 
gate, and into this the box was gently slipped, 
some one covering it from the sun with a quilt. 

“ Her hands ’ll git jolted loose on these rough 
roads,” speculated a woman near Sylvia. “Them’s 
her geranyums thar by the fence ; jest took ’em 
out’n the pit.” 

Sylvia looked away. 

At the side of the house a feather-bed bulged 
over the snake-fence, and several pillows in the 
forks of a low tree gave an intimation of Rosetta’s 
sickness. Everything suggested her, from the 
muslin curtains in the deep windows to the rose- 
vine clambering freshly against the bleached logs. 

“ I remember the first time ever I saw Rosetty,” 
mused an old man, watching the filling of a jolt- 
wagon ; “pretty little gyrl she was, white ez cotton, 
yeller hair a-flyin’. Lawd, well !” 

“ She won’t be left to moljer alone,” said the 
woman. “Her maw and sister lays thar a-wait- 
in’ on her.” 

Delosier was looking uneasily at Sylvia. 


i68 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ I want to take you home,” he said. “ I wish 
they would get those teams out of the way.” 
And he added, “That room was terribly close. 
I was afraid for you from the first. Dearest, you 
looked like nothing merely earthly as you stood 
there singing.” 

The back of the wagon in which Rosetta was 
clanged to with a sound like a harsh, short laugh. 
Sylvia’s gaze was set on the funeral train now filing 
down the road — wagons heavy and light, saddle- 
horses and mules moving up and down over the 
rocks. 

“They are gone,” said Sylvia, sharply, as the 
last horse, his sides hidden in the balloon-like 
swell of a woman’s skirt, rounded the hill. 


XXIII 

Sylvia,” said the captain, meeting his niece in 
the hall the following Sabbath morning, “there’s 
preaching to-day over at Tripper’s, four miles 
down Trace Fork pike. Weldmeyer’s going to 
exhort. I’ll send for a rig and we’ll go. He’s 
immense, Weldmeyer is ; used to drive a team 
for us before he got conviction. Delosier ’ll like 
him.” 

As they approached the hamlet of Tripper’s, 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


169 


after a bracing whirl over the hard road, the place 
disclosed itself as a settlement consisting of two 
houses, a store, and a low church, standing just 
across a shallow creek. The houses looked old, 
but the church was new, and had a certain inter- 
est for Sylvia and Delosier, the captain having 
related its history as they came along. 

It seemed that the store and houses belonged 
to one William Tom Tripper, who for years had 
been one of the stanchest upholders of the church 
at Brown’s Mill, the hamlet beyond. Tripper was 
not a man of blameless morality, but nobody very 
much minded the matter of his misdoings until 
the occasion when a family difference caused him 
to shoot a certain brother-in-law of his quite dead 
in his tracks. Then at once everybody remem- 
bered everything which had helped to give Trip- 
per a “ record,” and opinion set against him, 
though he was known to be perfectly justified in 
killing his brother-in-law, that kinsman having 
“ put in ” when Tripper was forcibly correcting 
his own wife. 

Even in religious bodies are folk of narrow 
views, and in the church at Brown’s Mill were 
those who admitted a certain squeamishness at 
having their petitions borne red-handed to the 
throne of grace. Tripper being mighty in prayer, 
and given to a large exercise of his power. 

No one, however, undertook to state his fin- 


170 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

ical ideas to Tripper himself; but as time went on, 
Tripper, though by no means a morbidly sensi- 
tive person, began to suspect a distinct coldness 
in the amens following his pleas. 

One night he got up in meeting, and with his 
eye on Brown, whose mill had made the town, he 
expressed in simple, graphic language his opinion 
of the body which he addressed. He invoked 
Omniscience to condemn forever and eternally 
each man who listened, and, having commended 
to the vengeance of Heaven the mean shell of a 
sanctuary in which he stood, he declared his in- 
tention of building for himself a church painted 
in two shades of green, with backs to the seats. 

Whereupon, with unaffected dignity, he with- 
drew, taking his family, and forever breaking off 
his connection with the congregation at Brown’s 
as well as with Brown himself, whom he after- 
wards met in the public highway and cut over 
the eye with a hoe. 

Commercial men having dealings with Mr. Trip- 
per found it necessary to protect trade by indors- 
ing piety. Tripper himself was no churl of his 
money, and the new church soon stood beyond 
the creek, lifted coyly on four corner-posts, which 
gave it a shy, maidenly air, as if its skirts were 
hitched up for wading the stream and it hoped 
no one was looking at its ankles. It had three 
windows to a side, and one big step at the door. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 171 

in which a number of people were passing as the 
captain drove up. 

The seats seemed to be filled, but a man in 
rusty black brushed a row of children from a 
front bench. He personally led the new-comers 
forward, his lean figure oscillating at the hips, his 
arms stiffly bent in a position which accented his 
swaggering gait and the lurch of his lower jaw. 

The older men sat in a corner by the preacher’s 
stand. The younger ones were along the right 
of the aisle, their brown faces appearing to Syl- 
via in side evidence like the profiles on a row of 
copper coins. 

The women were together on the left, some 
lost in the abject seclusion of black sun-bonnets. 
One girl seemed to be a rural belle, with her open 
red mouth and frizzled hair, her dangling ear- 
rings, and towering hat on which matted pink 
feathers mixed with scarlet glass cherries. 

The man in the rusty black had mounted the 
preacher’s stand and was giving out a hymn. 

During the service, men and boys, as it pleased 
them, got up and went out-doors for a brief re- 
laxation, or stalked forward to get a drink from 
a blue bucket in front of the pulpit, letting the 
dipper clash back as they brushed their lips, giv- 
ing a long gurgling breath. 

In front of Sylvia a young woman hushed her 
baby. It kept on whimpering, and, nestling its 


172 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


head in her arm, she bared her breast to the fret- 
ting lips, arching her large hand over the bosom. 

“ I don’t keer fer a religion I got to keep — I 
want one thet ’ll keep me,” the preacher was say- 
ing as Sylvia got track of him again. 

Two boys noisily changed their seats. Some 
one opened the door, and walking up the aisle 
with an assured step, sat down. 

“ How naturally these people take their relig- 
ion !” thought Sylvia. “ If they are thirsty, they 
seem to feel that water is as respectable as 
preaching.” 

“ Don’t you believe it,” the preacher was de- 
claring, in reference to some remark of his own. 
“ Man don’t jest want strength’ning and helping. 
He wants grace to git in its work on him. It 
don’t make a dung-heap less of a dung-heap to 
build a fence round it. You got to mix earth 
with it and plant seed if you aim to change it — 
it ain’t in it to change itself.” 

There was a draught through the place. Who- 
ever it was that had just come in had perhaps 
left the door open. Sylvia turned with a little 
shiver. Just across the passage, his eyes glowing 
upon her, sat the man whose step had rung so 
confidently on the bare floor. 

It was Delk. 

He had come over from Clingsville on horse- 
back, and finding Sylvia and the captain gone. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


173 


had followed them, unable to get the upperhand 
of his impatience, too long curbed and grown met- 
tlesome from restraint. He wondered who the 
stranger with them was, but did not concern him- 
self deeply with this, being engrossed in a passion 
of content only to be near Sylvia once more, in 
sight of her face’s witching pallor, her slight throat 
and hazy hair. The turned ruffle of her gown, 
of the spring-like color he remembered so well, 
gave him the old sense of softness and vitality. 

Sylvia felt her blood shrink. She perceived his 
glance upon her as sensibly as she might have 
felt the breath of a flame. She looked at Delo- 
sier sitting intent on the preaching, his cool eyes 
judicially narrowed. What a difference there 
was between the two ! 

“ They seem scarcely of one race,” she thought. 
“ One is merely manhood in the lump, the wet 
clay unshaped to more than the heavy outline of 
the sculptor’s idea; the other is the finished 
bronze, set on chiselled granite, full of meaning.” 

She wondered what she should do ; how she 
should speak to Bylands. The preacher was pray- 
ing, and she pressed her brows on the back of the 
bench in front of her, glad to shut her eyes for 
a moment. There was a hymn in conclusion, but 
she kept her head down, unaware of it. 

Delosier gently touched her. “They are go- 
ing, dear,” he said. 


174 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Bylands was waiting just outside. He was 
talking with the captain, but his eyes sought Syl- 
via, making her way out. How very quiet she 
looked ! — but there were people about — and Ro- 
setta — yes, it was natural enough that she should 
regard him thus impassively, giving him a hand 
so expressionless that he dared not grasp it hard. 

“You are back?” she said. 

“Yes; I—” 

She feared he would call her Sylvia, and inter- 
rupted him. 

“ We are glad to have you with us again,” she 
said. 

And then there was no more chance of talk, 
for the captain had driven up to the step, and 
was waiting, and in a moment they were gone 
— Sylvia and her uncle and the strange young 
man, whoever he was. 


XXIV 

Bylands, backing his horse, gave the depart- 
ing carriage a glance of dissatisfaction. Sylvia’s 
manner had the empty grace of indifferent cour- 
tesy, but he reflected that perhaps her chill bear- 
ing sprung from her feeling about Rosetta, and 
this idea kept him from going at once to the 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


175 


Lichens House to spend the rest of the day with 
his friends. 

During the afternoon he lingered about town, 
hearing of Rosetta’s last hours, of her burial, and 
of Miss Bylands’s singing, which had like to 
overcome her. Now that Rosetta was dead, 
people put away their rancor towards Delk. He 
had not acted just “square,” but no one felt 
called on to maintain a pious disapproval. He 
was met as usual, and the gossip of the village 
was detailed to him in friendly fashion. Ob- 
scure reports respecting Delosier crept to the 
surface. 

“ Feller from ’Weesianer thet’s lawin’ fer the 
cap’n. Ben about hyar right smart. Him and 
the cap’n’s niece ’pears to hit it off pooty tol’able 
well.” 

Delk gave a start, and chewed at his mus- 
tache, while the man went on to relate that in 
his opinion Delosier was “ no slouch of a fel- 
ler, though his head was so all-fired slick; jest 
throwed his money around like he owned a 
winnin’ boss.” 

“ Well,” said Captain Bylands, coming into the 
mill office Monday morning, “how do things 
look? You must hev took the first train after 
you got my last letter.” 

“ I was coming anyway,” said Delk. “ I ought 
to have come back long ago. Captain, I want to 


176 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


ask you one thing : who is this Delosier you’ve 
got with you ?” 

The captain picked a hair from his pen-nib, 
and set the date on a letter-head. “Mr. Delosier,” 
he said, “ is a young man me and Sylvia met in 
the South. Great business man. I wouldn’t be 
surprised if his practice nets him — well, I wouldn’t 
be took back at any figger you could name. Fine 
family — the Delosiers — though George himself 
hesn’t any near kin. It’s French stock, but he’s 
a rale, rank-pizen American clear down to his 
shoe-pegs ; belongs to the right party ; votes the 
straight ticket every time, and never scratches !” 
The captain took out a new blotter. “ I don’t 
know as I could of given Sylvia to a man that 
wasn’t sound on the issues,” he added. 

Delk, facing him at the desk beyond, felt his 
world reel away. “ Why didn’t you tell me ? 
Why wasn’t it mentioned?” he stammered, set- 
ting a firing face upon the captain, who went on 
writing. “ You knew I — you knew very well I 
ought to— to have been prepared. I ought to 
have known of this thing.” 

“What good would it have done you?” asked 
the captain. “ When a man’s going to be hanged 
it don’t help matters none for him to be choked 
with a pocket-handkerchief every day for a week 
beforehand. Besides, it was nobody’s business 
— my niece’s marriage with Mr. Delosier. I never 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


177 


thought anything about you, one way or another. 
I jedged you’d got over all that ” — he waved his 
hand — “long ago. You hed too many irons in 
the fire, Delk. I reckon if you look into things 
you’ll see you ain’t cut up half as bad as you let 
on — hunh } You better make up your mind to 
knuckle down to things, and not let folks get on 
to nothing — hunh } Come on over to the house 
and do the straightforward thing, Delk — tell Syl- 
via you’re glad to see her so happy. For her 
and Delosier — Well, well, folks that ain’t fools 
at some time in their lives ’ll never be wise. 
Come over and give ’em your good wishes. 
Sylvia ’ll expect it. She’s always hed a right 
friendly feeling for you, Sylvia hes.” 

Delk let a breath through his teeth. “ I will,” 
he said, with a laugh — “ I will.” 

That afternoon, as Mrs. Lichens was hanging 
a clean towel on the office roller. Bylands opened 
the door. His face relaxed a little with the ne- 
cessity of appearing to the landlady as usual. 

“ What’s this ?” he asked, in a tone of banter — 
“ what’s this I hear about you, Mrs. Lichens ? 
They tell me you’re going to take up with Dye. 
It isn’t true, is it, after all you’ve said against 
him — run him down to the ground ?” 

Mrs. Lichens turned upon him, her bosom 
heaving with puffy indignation. “Thar’s one 
thing ez I never said about Henery Dye,” she 


12 


178 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


announced, her eyes glittering. “ I never said ez 
he was a serapim. My Maker’s will is mine. So 
long ez He makes male critters the way He does, 
all I say is, what suits Him suits me. I don’t 
ast fer a man with wings. It’s hard enough to 
keep track of ’em when they walk on legs. God 
knows whar they’d be ef they could fly !” She 
gasped a little, jerking her head. “Neither do 
I say ez Henery Dye is a he-goat without stain, 
or a bullock without blemish ; but I do say this : 
thar’s some things he ain’t got to answer fer. He 
may hev seen the day when he’s hed too much 
whiskey aboard ; he may hev ben in a fight now 
and agin and caved somebody in ; but he never 
wheedled round no gyrl, and put his ring on her 
finger, with a pearl in it, ez I’ve seen with my 
own two eyes,” panted Mrs. Lichens, incohe- 
rently, “ and then lit out, a-sayin’, ‘ My business 
takes me elsewhar.’ ” 

Bylands felt her glance of contempt as keenly 
as if she had flung out a pike-pole and grappled 
his cheek with the steel fang. He bit his lips. 

“Will you tell Miss Bylands I am here and 
would like to see her ?” he said. 

“ What am I here fer but to fetch and kerry ?” 
asked the landlady, with an apostolic smile as she 
rolled away. 

Sylvia’s impulse was one of escape. She 
thought of saying she was sick or busy; and 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


179 


then, realizing that she could not long avoid By- 
lands if he wished to see her, and remembering 
that Delosier was out of the house, having gone 
over to Clingsville to send a telegram, she made 
up her mind to face the matter straightway. 
She pinned on her hat and took up a pair of 
gloves. 

“ He will think I am going out and will be 
brief,” she considered. 

“I wasn’t sure you would come down,” said 
Delk, as she appeared. He had his feet on the 
stove and his hat on his head, bent on asserting 
his lack of consideration. 

Sylvia slanted on him an unconcerned glance. 
“ Why shouldn’t I come ?” 

‘‘ I should think you’d hardly care to see a man 
you’ve treated as you have me. Here I’ve been 
going through every worry and hardship, upset 
with all kinds of anxiety, through the position 
you put me in ; and when I come back, thinking 
everything was all right, and you would make 
up to me for all my troubles, what do I find ? I 
find you going with a man nobody knows any- 
thing about. I reckon you thought I’d drop 
back and out of sight. Well, you’re mistaken. 
If I can’t do anything else, I can make you suf- 
fer the way I have since I came home. I can do 
it, and I will !” 

Sylvia was listening with an air of attention. 


i8o 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ If you will kindly explain what you are blaming 
me for — ” 

“You know well enough. I’m in no humor 
to smooth things over. You let me believe you 
loved me. You never just said so, but you let 
me tell you a dozen times a day that I wor- 
shipped you. You know perfectly well that I 
never thought of loving you till you let me see 
that I could ; and I did. And now — ” he dropped 
his head, choking — “ there’s nothing good in 
earth or heaven — that’s what you’ve done for me ! 
You’ve killed all the soul I had !” 

“ Oh yes,” breathed Sylvia, hardly aloud, “ I 
have done it ! You are a blameless, beguiled 
creature ; I am a hardened reprobate ! Oh, well ! 
the only thing I am ashamed of is of having cared 
for you even a little.” 

“ Cared for me !” sneered Delk, with a thin 
lip — “ for six days after I left you, perhaps.” 

“ It was longer,” said Sylvia, buttoning her 
glove ; “ I think it was a week.” 

Her sarcasm stung Bylands like the curl of a 
fine lash. “ Don’t think you can fling me aside 
so easy,” he said, loudly. “You’ll see. I shall 
ask this adventurer of yours what he thinks of 
your actions to me. I shall tell him — ” 

“ What a coward you are ?” asked Sylvia, 
pulling on the other glove. “ I hardly think I 
would reveal the intricate meannesses of my 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


l8l 


character to so little purpose. He will not be- 
lieve your stories.” 

“ I have proof. You forget that man’s face in 
the window. Bob Valley — ” 

“ Is a man,” said Sylvia, quietly. “ He will 
have no hand in your mire.” 

Bylands felt himself strangling. He stumbled 
to his feet, aware presently that for all his blind 
rage, Sylvia was standing calmly before him, still 
smoothing the fingers of her glove, her figure 
poised in an easy dignity, her face unmoved. 

“ Are you going now ?” she asked, in a tone of 
courteous dismissal. 

He muttered a word or two, at which Sylvia 
winced and shrunk like a hair which is drawn be- 
tween two sharp finger-nails. 

“ Do not go too far !” she said, with a painful 
sort of distinctness. “You are not dealing with 
a harmless creature that will coil about your foot 
or creep off, scared.” Her eyes shone narrow, 
and she drew back, lifting her head like a snake 
which is about to strike. “There is venom in 
me. I will fight.” 


i 82 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


XXV 

“Look here!” said the captain, slamming a 
log-rule on his desk. “ If this thing is going on 
much longer, I wish you’d clear out till you feel 
differ’nt. You’ve ben in the drug- store too 
often this morning.” 

“ I can withdraw from the business altogether,” 
retorted Delk. 

He was sitting across the doorway, his feet 
against the jamb. For a day or two he had been 
looking pale and sick, but now a dull color burned 
through his dark skin, and his light brown eyes 
seemed as if settling back, their clearness dis- 
turbed. His lips, vaguely defined, were purplish, 
and when he spoke it was slowly and a little un- 
certainly, as if the medium of speech confused 
him, though his mind appeared to him even 
steadier than usual. 

The captain turned on the stool, his expres- 
sion changing as he looked at the figure in the 
door. “If you were yourself you wouldn’t use 
that tone to me,” he said. “All I want is to help 
you. You’re young ; green timber ain’t so strong 
as dry. But I’d like to see you try to brace up a 
little. I know jest what you’re going through. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


183 


It ain’t easy. I — I’ve ben there myself. Unly 
I hed more show than you hev for giving down. 
I hedn’t mistaken things or presumed on friend- 
ship. And I lived to get over it, sound as a nut, 
without liquor.” 

Delk, with a short laugh, knocked his chair 
away and left the office. 

It was warm outside in the sunshine. A flock 
of geese were squatting in a little green space 
near the office. At Delk’s step they rose with 
curious ease, as if the ground had lifted them. 
Delk walked with his usual gait, but he kept his 
eyes down, only muttering gruffly as a man in 
a buck-board greeted him. He stepped on the 
square stone before the drug-shop and strolled in. 
The man in charge had just pulled a tooth, and 
was exhibiting it to the boy in whose jaw it had 
lately been. 

“ That thar tooth hev the longest roots ever 
I laid eyes on ! It’s a good thing it’s out’n 
your head, Smiler ! It ’d of done you up.” 

The boy, holding his mouth, stared with pleased 
interest. “ Blame ’f it didn’t feel ez big ez a 
broadaxe ’fore you jerked it !” he commented. 

Delk, going behind the counter, occupied him- 
self in filling a small glass. He drained it, and 
stood chewing his mustache, his eyes on the 
floor. As the boy went out he took up the glass 
again. 


1 84 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


Leaning on the counter, the druggist began to 
expostulate. “ Look-a-here, Bylands,” he said, 
“ thet’s no stuff for you to be handlin’ thet way. 
It’s right raw. I speak ez your friend. Ef I had 
any Buck Creek er Camp Nelson I wouldn’t say 
a word. But it ain’t no use fer me to keep a good 
article. Ain’t no call fer nothing but barbed-wire 
juice. And you know ez well ez I do thet a man 
can’t put much o’ thet under his belt and not feel 
it. You been samplin’ thet jug fer sever’l many 
days. Better let me fix you up a dose of quinine 
and pepsin.” 

“ Oh, feed your drugs to the natives !” sneered 
Delk. 

“ All right,” remarked the other, with an air of 
shifting consequences. “Your head ’ll feel like 
a balloon on a string by to-morrer.” 

Bylands banged the door behind him, leaning 
against the porch-post and staring blankly down 
the street. Everything had a kind of looming 
look. When he glanced at a fixed object it 
seemed to start towards him. A man going down 
the cross-road to the hotel had a peculiar gait; 
he appeared scarcely to touch the ground at all. 

Suddenly Delk’s face fired. The man in the 
road, walking smartly, had got nearer, a light 
overcoat under his arm. It was Delosier. 

The sight of him was to Bylands’s disordered 
faculties like a spark set to gunpowder. A wild 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


185 


impulse flamed along his veins. He straightened 
himself, and in another instant swung out to in- 
tercept the careless figure coming towards him. 


XXVI 

There was no purpose in Bylands’s mind. He 
hardly knew what he meant to say or do. It had 
never been in his books to carry out his threats 
against Sylvia. In a sober moment that which 
he defined to himself as his honor would have 
prevailed with him ; but the fever of destruction, 
of wreaking his misery of resentm.ent upon some 
happy, healthy part of the world, impelled him 
past reason at the sight of Sylvia’s favored lover. 

Delosier stopped with an air of attention. 

“ When are you going to leave here ?” inquired 
Delk, heavily, his head making little nods of em- 
phasis. “ I’m about sick of this.” 

Delosier, giving him a look, made as if to pass. 

“ No you don’t !” laughed Bylands, catching at 
the Southerner’s sleeve. “ I’ve got a word or two 
to say. You ought to know a little something 
about the woman you’re going to marry. She 
hasn’t told you she promised to marry me^ has 
she ? She promised — Let’s see, how was it t 
—oh yes ! it was about Rosetta. After I had got 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


1 86 

out of that, Sylvia was going to marry me. Ro- 
setta died, you see. It was Sylvia’s doings—” 
he paused on a breath. 

Delosier had drawn away with a shut fist, his 
breath laboring. Then his arm fell. “ Get out 
of my way !” he said. 

His look was of an anger so deep that it swayed 
Bylands as if it directed the operations of a mech- 
anism. He had a dumb sense of wonder as he 
stood aside. 

Delosier strode on. 

It chanced to be the last day but one of the 
Louisianian’s visit, and Sylvia had promised to 
show him a certain cave some way down Knob 
Lick. There was scarcely another place any- 
where about which they had not explored to- 
gether, and though the cave in question was not 
much of a cave, being merely a rocky hole in the 
hill-side, Delosier had expressed the liveliest in- 
terest in seeing it. He had gone down to the 
post-office while Sylvia went to get her hat. 

As she put it on she glanced from her window 
over the pasture opposite, in which cows were 
moving slowly. The foliage of the west knobs 
seemed nearly flat, so shadowless it lay in the 
sunshine. The road below was of a sultry yel- 
low. In the Hines girls’ yard hens were cack- 
ling, and at the back hall door Mrs. Lichens was 
bargaining with a man who had eggs to sell. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


187 


These signs of life scarcely reached Sylvia. She 
was in a world of soft unrealities ; but as she 
dreamed, her face now and then twitched as if 
these visionary musings had their sharpnesses. 

“ It is odd !” she speculated. “ I feel as if I 
was walking in rose paths with him at one side, 
while at the other, hidden in the bushes, a crouch- 
ing dog waits to spring at me. It isn’t pleasant 
to have to keep an eye out for the lurking brute. 
Even the smell of the roses doesn’t altogether 
compensate. And yet if one’s happiness must 
be paid for with anxiety, better so than to have 
no happiness at all.” 

She began to wonder at Delosier’s delay, and, 
leaning over the sill, looked down the road. De- 
losier was crossing the side street where the rail- 
way ran, and as Sylvia watched him she became 
aware that a man had approached him, and that 
he was stopping. And then her heart sunk, for 
she saw that the second man was Bylands. 

She had hoped Delk would think better of car- 
rying his word into effect ; but there they stood 
in speech, those two men who could by no chance 
have any common subjects to engage them. 

She saw Delosier make an effort to pass, and 
stop again as if at some appeal. 

All at once she knew, beyond any doubt, that 
Bylands was verifying his menace — that he was 
telling all he could tell of her, much or little. She 


I 88 AN EARTHLY PARAGON 

saw the Louisianian draw back with a doubled 
arm. She saw his hand drop in a gesture as if 
he swept something from his path, and then, as 
she looked, he came on towards the house. 

Sylvia sunk back, catching at a chair which 
stood near. It was over. Her faculties, released 
from the strain, seemed wholly inert. For a mo- 
ment this sense of dulness lasted, and then, as 
if her mind had got a new strength from the 
passing lethargy, a strange keenness appeared to 
sharpen her perceptions. 

There was a curious twill in the texture of her 
gown, and in her hands some odd little creases she 
had never before noticed developed themselves. 

“ In a minute he will be here,” she thought, her 
words arranging themselves in sets. “ He won’t 
ask me anything. He will only look at me. His 
look will be a look of such faith that I shall tell 
him. I shall tell him the truth. I shall take my 
heart out and show him the coiled, flat-headed 
thing it has been hiding. It wouldn’t seem 
much to most men. To him it will seem — it will 
seem — ” She looked wildly around. “And when 
I have told him he will go. He will shake my 
face out of his heart as he will shake my hand 
out of his palm when I try to say good-bye. 
Good-bye — oh — ” 

She struggled up blindly, striking against the 
toilet things on a little table hard by. They 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 1 89 

clashed, and her hand-mirror, slipping over the 
edge, sparkled into a hundred atoms on the floor. 

“ Broken,” muttered Sylvia, “ broken — all bro- 
ken !” She dragged her heel in the splintered 
glass. “ To try to live — to try to live after life is 
gone ! Oh, my beloved ! how can I — how — ” 
Suddenly she lifted her head, her figure height- 
ening as if to some marvel of renunciation. 
There was purpose in her eyes, and catching De- 
losier’s step in the porch below, she crossed the 
room steadily and went down-stairs. 

Delosier, opening the office door, saw her com- 
ing towards him ; but though she had a strange 
look, he was not aware of it, for his own face 
showed a disturbed mind, and at sight of her he 
gave a short, excited laugh. 

Sylvia,” he said, “I am too put out to speak 
coherently — that fellow — that Bylands just stop- 
ped me out here. He dared to mention you^ 
Sylvia ! — to say you promised to marry him — to 
intimate that that poor child’s death — Rosetta 
Valley’s — was because — Sylvia !” 

A peculiar iciness crept over him. What fatal 
corroboration of Bylands’s charge could he read 
in those whitening lips and starting eyes, in which 
the pupils waxed big and waned to points, as if 
answering to swift brain pulsations t In the pas- 
sage of an instant the woman before him seemed 
as if become weird and elfish ; as if the spell he 


190 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


had been under was lifted, and he saw her with 
natural sight, her borrowed grace slipping from 
her like a garment. Her heart was a net and 
a snare. Those little, cool fingers were bands 
which close with death. In the insight of the 
moment the creature he had loved appeared as if 
crumbling to ashes, her flawless white disintegrat- 
ing at the crossed fingers of truth, only a film of 
dust marking the lines of the shape which he 
remembered. And then, suddenly enough, the 
vision was gone, like a mist through which the 
sun breaks. 

Sylvia had touched his arm, her little, soft 
laugh was in his ears. At the horror in his face 
her eyes had lost their look of purpose, reflecting 
for an instant his own expression. They had 
grown lifeless of look, and then a quick bright- 
ness flashed in them. 

“ Poor fellow !” she said, gently — “ poor fellow ! 
It is really very pitiful about him. I shall have 
to speak to my uncle. I hate to think of it ; some- 
how it seems cruel to draw attention to him. He 
has annoyed me a good deal with his ravings of 
affection, but I can’t help being a little sorry for 
him.” 

‘‘ Sylvia,” said Delosier, passionately, “ just for 
a moment I — Sylvia, forgive me ! I — ” 

“ Were you so angry with him ?” she asked, 
looking at him with large, innocent eyes. “A 


SYLVIA HAD TOUCHED HIS ARM, HER LITTLE SOFT LAUGH WAS IN HIS EARS 















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AN EARTHLY PARAGON I91 

poor, undisciplined creature like that ! I do not 
like even to speak of him ; but it has been very 
painful to me, all this, and even humiliating. I 
don’t know how it came about. He was here a 
good deal, and I think I treated him as I do ev- 
ery one, though he was often so tiresome. When 
he began to push his regard upon me, betrothed 
as he was to that poor, pretty child who died, I 
hardly knew what to do. Coldness doesn’t 
reach such people as he. I was about to tell 
my uncle, when I think he saw how things were, 
for he sent Delk away. That was just before I 
met you.” 

“ And that look you had, Sylvia, that look of 
sadness and weariness ! — I understand it now ! 
Poor little love ! to have been flung in contact 
with such clay !” 

Sylvia smiled mournfully. “ I have walked in 
thorny ways,” she said. “ Remember this when 
you find rents in my fine lawns.” 

Oh,” he said, deeply, “to think I should have 
been in the world and not have known when you 
needed my hand to break the briers down. And 
this fellow ! I feel it in my heart to be sorry for 
him, dear. He loves you, in his sort. He is to 
be pitied.” 

“ He will live through it,” said Sylvia. “ But I 
wish he would go away. There is no escaping his 
gloom. The other day he came upon me in the 


192 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


office, and before I could go he had gone over the 
whole thing again. I felt like a person who is 
having a dose of some sickening oil poured down 
the throat.” 

Delosier looked at her with growing resolution 
in his gray eyes. “ Sylvia,” he said, holding her 
hands, “you have dealt too easily with this fellow. 
But that is your way, my gentle little love ! You 
would give a kind last word to your headsman. 
It is well that you are going to have a sordid 
commercial person like me to square accounts for 
you, to make the world render value for all your 
sweetness. I am going to begin at once. I am 
going to put a stop to these annoyances. I am 
going to take you away. No, Sylvia ! don’t say 
anything, dearest. I must take you away from 
these miserable surroundings — a little for your 
sake, a good deal more for my own. To-day I shall 
see the captain and get him to agree to my plans. 
And to-morrow I shall go south and make ar- 
rangements to leave things for a long while. And 
then, Sylvia, we will see what it is like really to 
live. We will go wherever that wild sweet fancy 
of yours points the way. I want to see the earth 
through your eyes. Mine have hitherto seen land 
as a good investment, and rivers valuable in a 
navigable sense. Darling, take me into your 
world of faery.” In a moment he added, lightly, 
“ You don’t know how you have changed me. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


193 


you little gossamery thing, you, ‘ half angel and 
half bird!’ You didn’t know I could quote poetry, 
did you ? Neither did I, but I can.” 


XXVII 

Delk, seeing Delosier going off the next day 
with his valises, had a great emotion of surprise, 
followed by one of gratification. From the South- 
erner’s manner he had thought his words struck 
stone. Delosier’s look of contempt had smitten 
even Bylands’s dazed perceptions to a sense of 
shame at his own debasement. He had grovelled 
to no purpose, and the dust still stung his lips. 

Now at the other man’s departure a wild hope 
rose in him. Perhaps, after all, his disclosure 
had worked the effect he wished, and Sylvia’s 
dream of happiness was over. Bylands made 
rapid inquiries concerning the matter. When he 
found that Delosier had taken the train at Clings- 
ville for New Orleans, and that on being ques- 
tioned by some one as to his probable return 
quite soon, he had laughed “ sortah ork’ard,” 
affirming nothing, Delk came under a distinct 
conviction. 

If Delosier was gone finally and forever, Delk 
felt that the complexion of things was much more 
13 


194 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


endurable, not to say hopeful. He did not, even 
in imagination, go quite so far as to surmise that 
Sylvia would soon forgive the man who had 
dashed down her airy structure of love. But he. 
Bylands, would so humble himself for her for- 
giveness that she could not long withhold it ; and 
once admitted again to a basis of the most mod- 
erate friendship, certain odds were in his favor. 

Against the nullity of Chamouni life Delk knew 
he must make something of a figure. She might, 
indeed, have come to see that it was not a very 
heroic figure, but since there was so little else 
to win attention, it was not impossible that every- 
thing might go well in the end. 

Ideas of this sanguine color acted on Delk’s 
mind more powerfully than the sedatives to which 
he at once resorted. As he grew something of 
himself, he remembered his last talk with Sylvia, 
and bitterly regretted having fallen to so coarse 
a show of temper. He longed for a chance to 
exonerate his bearing upon that occasion, but it 
seemed as if Sylvia never left the house, and he 
dared not visit her, feeling sure she would not 
see him. 

One evening, just after dark, lounging about 
the business corner of town, he thought he saw 
the gleam of a woman’s gown on the Lichens 
House porch. It was moonlight, and the shadows 
of the May- time trees checkered the bleached 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 1 95 

road in a tremulous design. A whippoorwill was 
trying a few gurgling notes in the distance. Be- 
low the station platform a small group of darkies 
were sitting at a game of dice. Some one was 
keeping up a hissing sound, and Bylands could 
see the rhythmic motion of a black hand as it 
swayed back and forth, the fingers snapping over 
the bits of ivory. Farther down the street a girl’s 
laugh rung shrill. 

Bylands, with his eye upon that pale spot un- 
der Mrs. Lichens’s scant porch-vines, crossed the 
road and loitered nearer, keeping as much as 
might be in the shadows till he was close enough 
to see clearly. It was Sylvia, and she was quite 
alone, sitting back in the captain’s big chair, her 
head at ease. She wore something white and thin 
and long, which seemed to go about her like a 
mist. Her hands, lying open in her lap, had a look 
of passing into the filmy texture as insensibly as 
if they were melting. A dreaming quietude trans- 
fused her face. She seemed a thing called into 
being by the moonlight, altogether illusory, until 
Bylands crossed the road and she recognized him, 
and then the cold fall of her eyelids was singu- 
larly humanizing in its effect. 

“Sylvia,” Bylands broke out very humbly, 
“ I’ve come to ask you to forgive me. I don’t 
know why I spoke as I did the other day. I was 
crazy.” 


196 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


“ Why Speak of it ?” said Sylvia. 

“ You — you won’t remember it then 

“ I have other things to think of,” she said, 
not unkindly. 

He thought her voice sounded sad. For the 
instant he had forgotten Delosier and his going 
and Sylvia’s probable melancholy. 

“ Oh,” he cried, “ I have done you an injury, 
haven’t I ? I never meant to blurt out every' 
thing to him. I was beside myself. He’s gone, 
hasn’t he ? Sylvia, if I have spoiled your life — ” 

Sylvia uttered a small laugh. “ Be easy,” she 
said ; “you haven’t. Mr. Delosier will be back. 
Our marriage is to be very soon. I am sure you 
will care to know of anything so closely concern- 
ing me.” 

Was that a fan she had opened ? Delk gazed 
at her dully. She began to move before her 
face something white and gauzy, and over it her 
eyes flickered with scorn and amusement and 
pity. This was all he had done, then ? Simply 
she was to be married, perhaps the sooner for his 
interference. He was no match for her, this 
slight, white creature sitting there with mockery 
on her parted lips. The mud with which he had 
thought to dash her seemed to be upon his own 
skirts. 

“So he forgave you?” he debated, stupidly. 
“ He forgave you ?” 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


197 


Sylvia laid her fan in her lap. It looked as if 
the moon had cast it there, a faint mask of itself. 
“Forgive?” she said; “do you fancy your de- 
liriums touched him at all ?” 

Bylands stared at her through a haze of ideas. 
She was still turning the cards to her own ends 
then, still doubling and equivocating. It had an 
impossible look. Would her blandishments serve 
actually to hoodwink high heaven ? She herself, 
who seemed so alive to fine feelings, would she 
work this treason on her own spirit ? 

“ Could you,” he stammered, “ be happy ? No, 
Sylvia ! such a marriage — ” 

Sylvia appeared to smile. “ My poor friend,” 
she insisted, leaning forward as if she spoke to a 
dull child, “ you have been reading books. Do 
you really suppose that all marriages are ideal 
unions of innocence and bravery? that each is 
the ending, with a flowery foot-piece, of some idyl 
in which villany has been worsted and virtue re- 
warded ? How little you know of life ! People 
who are not in the least exemplary often marry 
and get on pretty well. Weddings, like other 
things, have more or less insincerity in them. 
It’s bound to be so. We keep the best foot for- 
ward during the wooing, and if the varnished 
shoe is too tight and hurts, not being anything 
like the shape of the real foot, we bear it with 
thinking we shall kick it off after the ceremony 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


198 

for the slipshod thing we wear in private.” She 
picked at a little shadow on her loose sleeve 
where the vines dropped a print of themselves. 
“People are happy in marriage,” she went on, 
so lightly that Bylands could not make out if she 
was jesting or not, “in proportion as they are 
too stupid to find each other out, or clever enough 
to keep up pre-nuptial illusions.” 

Bylands had no views to offer. He felt that 
she confounded his reason with a juggle of words. 
She did not stick squarely by what was good or 
bad, by what rewarded or punished, so that you 
might tell its quality by the way it paid you back. 
He was merely confused by her serenity. His 
moral notions were being foully dealt with, his 
neatly laid pile of seasoned ethics was tumbling, 
the safe, solid heap a crash of barley-sugar sticks. 
Was everything going to turn out for this wom- 
an as if she had wrought uprightness ? Were the 
threads of her life coming out of fate’s loom as 
soft and fair as if she had done nothing to stain 
them ? 

“Something’s wrong,” he faltered. “It oughtn’t 
to be this way.” 

A certain shadow passed over Sylvia’s face. 
“Must I remind you,” she said, rather wearily, 
“ that we are not people in a story ? Heaven 
and earth don’t really clash together every time 
a man has been too saucy with the gods. You 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


199 


are floundering in a quicksand of melodrama. 
I’m afraid the curtain won’t fall at a critical mo- 
ment; I’m afraid the catastrophe won’t occur.” 
She wetted her lips. “ You would like to see my 
marriage dramatized by some startling event. Be- 
cause I haven’t always been inhumanly honest, 
you pine for the thunder -bolt. Well, well, the 
plague won’t descend, the ground won’t open ; I 
shall probably not be whitened with leprosy.” 

Bylands gave her a long look. “ You forget,” 
he insinuated — you forget me^ 

Behind her fan Sylvia’s face exhibited the 
shade of a fear, but over the gauze edge her eyes 
surveyed him easily. “Ah! you want to play the 
dens ex machina f ’ she intimated, with an air of 
interest. “ Which one of us, now, do you consid- 
er it would be most effective to do away with ?” 
Her amused tone gave Bylands a sense of ab- 
surdity in his position. She was watching him 
with a strained glance, her breath held. 

“ I’m not a fool,” he said, angrily. 

Sylvia seemed to sink back, breathing long. 
“ No,” she said, “ you are too wise to be a cat’s- 
paw for providential rebukes.” 

“ Rebukes !” muttered Delk. “ I don’t know. 
It doesn’t make much difference if a man’s hands 
are clean or dirty.” 

“ Yes,” said Sylvia, “ yes, it makes a difference. 
Only the hand that gets miry isn’t always with- 


200 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


ered on the instant — that is all. But you had bet- 
ter keep your hands clean if you can.” And then 
she asked, in rather a listless voice, “ Hadn’t you 
better go ? The dew must be falling. I believe 
I am — very cold. I shall have to say good-night.” 

She passed in-doors as soundlessly as if a 
moon ray had slipped over the threshold. A 
flower smell seemed to linger where she had 
been. 

Looking down, Delk saw two or three violets 
on the boards, their stems shredded as if nervous 
fingers had picked at them. He put the little 
purple things in his pocket as- he wandered down 
the road. 


XXVHI 

Early on the morning of Sylvia’s wedding- 
day it rained a little in an uncertain fashion, 
which in an hour or so had given the road only 
a tinge of red. The lowlands looked chill and 
dim under the heavy shadows of the bulging hills. 
Deep purples lurked in distant trees, fading in 
milky amethyst far off where the utmost range 
of knobs fainted against the sky. The air was 
so thick that when a plump, dark bird settled on 
a clothes-line in the Hines girls’ yard, his sup- 
port was indistinguishable, and he seemed to be 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


201 


bouncing in mid - air. The roofs of the village 
houses bent like dark brows among the trees, 
their dull walls looking bleached. One little 
dwelling of pale yellow rose like fumes of sul- 
phur, its curling outline framed in leafage. 

But the mist lifted with sunrise, and each grass- 
blade glittered in a crystal foil. The sky hung 
blue and feathery with indefinite wreaths of haze, 
and everything looked fresh and new. 

There was great stirring in the Lichens House. 
The landlady, her apron - strings flying, rushed 
aimlessly about, whisking into the office and mak- 
ing sure all was right in the parlor, a sacred 
apartment, which had not been opened since the 
burial of Mr. Lichens, and which still held a fur- 
tive odor of saltpetre and varnish. 

It was a little room, with a carpet so red that 
after observing it for some time people common- 
ly had an illusion that green clouds were pulsing 
before their dazed eyes. There was not much 
in it besides some Brussels carpet camp-stools 
and a table on which Mrs. Lichens’s choicest be- 
longings were set forth. These consisted in a 
transparent sugar heart dashed with gold, a china 
lamb, several queer stones, a volume of the Life 
of Clay^ a cup and saucer with a moss-rose de- 
sign crawling over them, and a red plush album 
with fat sides. 

These things Mrs. Lichens lingered over with 


202 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


a liking eye before she finally, with reluctance, 
opened a window to let in a little of the vaga- 
bond outer air. 

The preacher had come. At the captain’s ex- 
press wish it was the man who had read the last 
prayer over Rosetta Valley. He sat musing in 
the office, his legs crossed, one knee accurately 
squared against the blurring blue and green in the 
space of the open door. 

The captain himself was in an excitable humor, 
and talked more than his wont, relating bits of his 
experiences in rather an unnatural tone, as if he 
were strenuously keeping his spirits up and had 
got them pitched too high. Delosier, leaning 
against the old bar, looked with an abstracted 
smile across the shimmering pasture over the 
way, 

A boy came in with a basket of ferns and vio- 
lets. His bare feet showed the mud of the Knob 
side and river-bank. Delosier held the wicker 
thing up, its green fringe drooping. 

‘‘Will you take these to Sylvia, captain?” he 
asked. 

“ Will I ?” said the captain , “ go ’long ! you 
know you’re dying to take ’em up yourself. Go 
on !” 

Delosier laughed as he ran up the stairs. Mrs. 
Lichens, at his rap, showed her face in a crack of 
Sylvia’s door. She squeezed out, closing it. 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


203 


“ I’ll see she gits ’em,” she advised him. 

Delosier looked at his watch. ‘‘ How long be- 
fore she’ll be ready ?” he ventured. 

Mrs. Lichens gave a groan. “ Listen at him !” 
.she sighed. “ It ’ll be a good hour yit, so it will.” 

An hour ! why, it’s nearly ten now.” 

I can’t help thet,” declared Mrs. Lichens, 
patting her hands together ; “ God knows I can- 
not. Sylvia hain’t so much ez got her hair done 
yit. She’v’ took it down three sevurl times. She’s 
got herse’f ez narvous over it ez the chaff which 
the wind drivuf. I ben tellin’ her she wouldn’t 
’a’ ben so squirmin’ this mo’nin’ ef she’d of took 
the handful o’ quinine I fetched her last night.” 

“ Is she—” 

“ It’s nothing. All brides is jest thet fussy 
and fixy. Lord, the day I married Lichens they 
worked with me a good two hour a-rubbin’ me 
and feedin’ me toddy before ever they could git 
to lace me ! Seventeen inches around I was 
then ! Vanity of vanities ! I’ve lived to see the 
day when the stronges’ linin’ you kin put in a 
gown-body busts apart on me like the veil of the 
temple ! Well, you go on down-steers, Mr. Delo- 
sier, and wait the best way you kin.” 

The door shut after her. 

Outside on the office porch a lot of village chil- 
dren had gathered, and an expectant air pervaded 
the throng of men about the freight-house. In 


204 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


the doors of cottages women stood talking, on 
the watch for the departure of the wedding-party. 

Shining to its boiler-head the engine stood on 
the tracks, a blue-bloused man hanging from its 
window. Behind it the passenger coach showed 
a section of fresh pine in one side, a reminder of 
its last wreck. 

“ I heerd tell ez she wasn’t goin’ to be mar- 
ried in white,” said a girl, stopping at the gate of 
Duncan’s cottage. “Jest a wool dress ’thout a 
smitch o’ fixin’ on it ! Law, well, I’m this way : 
I’d be married in white ef I hed to pin a sheet 
round me ! ’Tain’t right good-luck, dyark clo’es 
ain’t.” 

Mrs. Duncan shook her head. “ She’s a sweet- 
favored little thing, cap’n’s niece is. Always asts 
after my left lung ez perticaler! Thar’s more’n 
the cap’n ’ll miss her. Yes’m. I’ll always mis- 
doubt ez Delk Bylands hed his eye p’intedly sot 
her way. Yes, ma'am. Fer I know this : he ain’t 
goin’ to the weddin’, and him kin and all. I 
got my notionts. He ain’t fit to go nowhar this 
mo’nin’ 1” She exchanged a glance with the girl, 
nodding towards the drug-shop. 

Delosier was taking a turn in the lower hall 
when Sylvia appeared at the head of the stairs. 
She came down slowly, her face pale, her eyes 
strangely big and bright. Delosier, looking up 
at her, felt as if his own countenance must be 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 20$ 

transfigured with the swelling of his heart. He 
took her hand without speaking. 

The next half-hour seemed to him to pass like 
a dream, here vivid with some sharp detail, there 
lapsing into a dim consciousness of unreality. 
The preacher’s long-drawn, gentle tones ; the cap- 
tain’s face struggling for composure ; Mrs. Lich- 
ens, hysterical in a parrot - green gown ; Henry 
Dye supporting her — these were all definite. The 
fantasy, too fair to be altogether actual, was the 
woman beside him, calmer than he, her grave 
eyes down. 

And then presently there was an outburst of 
good-will and leave-taking, and in some strange 
sort it was he who threw a handful of silver to 
the bare-footed babies in the porch as he and 
Sylvia and the captain made their way out. It 
was he, again, who replied to the congratulations 
of the crowd at the station, and who finally found 
himself inside the coach alone with Sylvia. 

The captain had bolted into the freight-house, 
and Sylvia looked out to see what had so sud- 
denly become of him. The tall knobs, green 
below, seemed to plunge through their leafy scab- 
bards, glittering bald on the summits. A bright- 
ening of early flowers shone on the lower slopes. 
Even the lumber piles had a mild, silvery lustre. 
Up the street Mrs. Lichens’s green gown relieved 
a handkerchief waving in farewell. The roughly- 


2o6 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


clad folk outside on the platform, men and wom- 
en, regarded her with kindly faces. 

There seemed to be a movement behind them ; 
the throng was opening to let pass the bowed 
figure of a man, old Bob Valley, his white hair 
blowing wild about his sunk cheeks and stony 
eyes. 

‘‘Good-bye. God bless you!” he muttered, 
standing under Sylvia’s window. “ Good - bye I 
My girl, my Rosetty, ef she was here — ” He 
turned away, his lips stretched in a soundless 
sob. 

Sylvia stared lifelessly over his head. 

In the road beyond a young man staggered 
along under the light shade of the maples, his 
dark face hidden in a slouching hat-brim. He 
stumbled against a hitching-post, and, uncertainly 
recovering himself, dealt it a powerless blow, 
cursing. 

The train was moving. A patter of rice struck 
the car- panels, a few grains stinging Sylvia’s 
cheek. 

“ How interested they are in you, dear ! Wave 
your hand to them again,” said Delosier. 

A stiff sort of smile touched Sylvia’s white lips 
as she obeyed. The coach rounded a little turn 
by the water-tank, and, still looking back, her eye 
caught the sudden gleam of a narrow white shaft 
newly piercing the dark cypresses of the South 


AN EARTHLY PARAGON 


207 


Knob, lifting above the common wood head- 
boards of the graveyard like a finger invoking 
silence on the dead. 

Sylvia caught at the flowers on her breast as 
if a spasm held her breath. 

“ Sylvia !” cried Delosier, alarmed, “ are you 
faint, dearest ?” 

“ No,” said Sylvia, turning miserably from his 
tender glance, her voice heavy, “ I am only— ‘ 
tired.” 


THE END 





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